Come and Get Me

In my absence, she grew distant. Suffering silently under an impossible weight of fear and failure, she gave in to the darkness that beckoned her. When I returned from my short Stateside trip, she was gone. She turned her phone off, she refused any of our calls. She tried to fully disappear. Knowing she’s not a girl anymore but a young adult, I released her to the Lord and prayed she’d return before too many natural consequences take her further away from herself, her Lord, and me. But in church that Sunday, I prayed for her. Prayer changes things. Not because our words can do any work of their own, but because prayer opens our own souls up to the Holy Spirit. As I prayed for her with my eyes closed, I saw a glimpse of her. She was sitting in a one room house, dark and cold and empty. She was sitting on a chair with her arms wrenched behind her back and her wrists bound together, tied to the chair. There were no sounds. She didn’t speak, but she looked at me. Mute, she called to me. Her eyes were big but lifeless. She beckoned without opening her mouth, “Please come and get me.”

 And the vision ended. I opened my eyes, startled by the direct phrase, “Come and get me.” The look on her face, the droopy and dead eyes reminded me of the day I picked her up only hours after she was brutally raped in broad daylight. I realized, though it had been over a year later, she was not where I thought she was on her healing journey. I felt the Lord showing me, “Kate, she’s still back there. She’s bound. She’s trapped. She’s broken and hurting. She needs Me. I am sending you.” It wasn’t a physical prison but a spiritual one.

The next morning I called an emergency meeting. I shared the vision with some of our leadership team. We discussed as colleagues what we missed the last year in terms of her healing journey. As we noted gaps, we came up with next steps. We had a proper plan in place, now we just needed to find her. But how? We didn’t have any clue or any way to get a hold of her. We contacted her older brother in hopes she contacted him, and maybe he could give us information. But we couldn’t get through to his number. So we prayed.

 Pushed by the urgency of the vision and prayer, the case manager and I got into the car after the team prayed for us. “Holy Spirit, you know where she is. We don’t. Please take us there.” With no clear direction, we got into the car and drove. Somewhere along the way, the brother called. He affirmed yes she had contacted him but he had no idea where she was. He named the city of the last place he knew she had been. So we drove there. We picked up the brother first and drove to the city with no idea where or how we would find her. Along the car ride, we had found out information about a boyfriend in this city. So we started looking for the boyfriend. It took all day, but we somehow managed to find his number (through the brother calling someone with the boyfriend’s same name, but it was not the boyfriend; incredibly, the stranger knew the boyfriend we were looking for and gave us his contact number)! By the end of the day, we had managed to call the boyfriend and he affirmed the girl we were looking for was staying with him. However, he said he was “far away” and couldn’t meet us nor would he give us information to find our girl. He said he could meet us later in the week instead. I was ready to give in. “Guys, we tried our best. At least we have a contact of the boyfriend now. Let’s try again tomorrow.”

 But our case manager was pushed by her faith. “Let’s not give up, yet, M. Let’s try to find his place anyway. One more attempt.” Not believing it could be possible, I agreed anyway because her hope gave me hope.

 Having the name of the boyfriend and a picture we found from social media, we drove around a bit and showed the picture and asked random strangers if they knew this guy and where we could find his homestead. We were directed to an area and told to ask around again. So we did. We showed a lady the picture and she hesitantly called her friend over. He came over and asked why we were looking for this guy. We relayed that we were trying to find our girl and he told us sorry he can’t give any info because what if we were trying to find the guy for revenge. We spent the next 10 minutes convincing them that we didn’t want revenge, we weren’t going to hurt the guy, just that we needed to find our girl. Reluctantly, he gave us a general direction but not specifics.

 We drove in the direction we were given and the brother said, “Stop, I think it’s here.” We stopped and parked away from the house and waited while the brother went to verify the house. Sure enough, out walked the girl we were looking for. I sprang out the car expecting her to look shocked or even try to hide from me/us. Instead, she looked right into my eyes and walked to me. As if she hadn’t run away to begin with, she looked like she was expecting me. She hugged me absent-mindedly but hot tears fell from her eyes to my shoulder. She didn’t say a word. But I felt her in arms surrender to the Savior. When I said, “Let’s go home,” she nodded without hesitation, grabbed her stuff and got into the car.

 This is a day I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. Not just because we found her and brought her home. But because God chased her! He pursued her. He ran after her! O the God of Hosea, the one who pursues and redeems and makes all things new! I’ll never forget the miracles of that day. How we left in our car with absolutely nothing but a prayer. And it’s prayer that got us through the entire day. It’s prayer that led us directly to her. Like, y’all! Seriously?! It’s prayer that did the impossible. It’s prayer that changes things.

 One of the most powerful but simple prayers I’ve learned in the last decade is this:

“Jesus, come and get me.” 

He does. He did. He will.

A Different Kind of Cind37ella Story

Saturday evening, the night before my 37^th birthday, on the ride back home from my sister’s lakehouse to my parents’, I swiped through pictures on my phone I had taken earlier that day. I stopped on one that caught my breath: Lucia, Benji, and Silas (my sister’s lastborn) were holding hands about to jump off the raft into the lake. I stared, my thoughts stopping time. I dreamt of this moment. 

 I used to pray that God would give me a pause button just once, so I could stop life around me in order to catch up or just breathe. In that moment, I swear He pressed pause for me. Life flashed back to both Christmases and summers where I’d be home for a visit, spending time with my family, especially my niece and nephews. As wonderful as it was spending time with them, there was always a piece missing; I couldn’t stop thinking, “Ah, Lucia and Benji would love this!” or “I wish the girls could see this!" or "If only Ben and Lu could meet their cousins; they’d have so much fun!” Ever since 2014 when I made the fulltime move, my heart was ever in two places – never quite whole.

 On Sunday morning, at 8:39 a.m., minutes after Mass began, I became 37 years old. During the opening prayers and Gloria, all I could think was – awe. Standing beside me in the very smalltown Catholic church pew I grew up in were two of my Swazi daughters, Ayanda and Chloe. I remember the day I met Ayanda like it was yesterday; she was 13 years old. One of my favorite early memories of Ayanda was when she once asked me (after I stopped at stared at the stars for the hundredth night in a row), “Mama Kate, do you not have any stars in America?” I laughed and told her of course we do but I had never seen them so beautiful as the ones in Swazi. I also remember her first time in a hotel room. She screamed like she had won the lottery, ran around the room, cuddling the pillows, jumping on the bed, and jumping in and out of the empty bathtub saying it was so great she could sleep in it! And to think, she was standing right beside me in my home church, two years after returning from America for her 4-year social work degree. She opened the way for Chloe, who was now just beginning her college journey at MATC. Looking over at Chloe standing in the pew with me, I smiled recalling the first moment I met her.

 It was 2014, just three months after I had moved fulltime to Swazi and became an immediate mom to many. I slept in a bunkbed but would get woken up at night from loud cockroaches on the floor, mice in our storage room, or knocks on my door from some of the girls who had nightmares and couldn’t sleep. But three months in, Chloe was my first personal placement. I remember picking her up and seeing how shy she was. She was so little, just 10 years old, and she pretended she didn’t know English. Until I said something that made her laugh, and she outed herself. After that, she spoke some of the best English of any others and has ever since impressed me with her language skills (she tested OUT of the college English placement test! That’s beating some Americans y’all!). Can it really be? That same 10-year-old is now standing in the very church I grew up in? She slayed her fears and took the giant leap of faith to follow her dreams, and now she’s here.

 Dreams. I couldn’t stop smiling. I wonder if the priest thought something strange was going on by the giant smile beaming from my heart to the crucifix above while he talked. Awe. I was just in awe as more recollections of the past month flooded me. My girls in America? Did that really just happen? Our tour, Scars: Up from Ashes, did that really just happen? My other brother and sister who had never met the girls before but now know many of them by name – did that really just happen? Lucia and Benji hand in hand with Silas their cousin? I mean… I cannot wrap my head around it, but my heart is swollen with it. Awe.

 I am just in awe of the way God has given me the desires of my heart. I am Cinderella, and this is my story. It’s not the traditional one, but it’s a royal one nonetheless. It’s a story of a Prince unlike any other giving me a world I only dreamt of and never thought could be mine. Two halves of my heart became one in a story so magical, only the King Himself could make it happen.

 So, although Lucia’s birthday note said, “I’m sorry that you’re turning 37 years old but to me you’re 30 and I love you so much!...” I couldn’t be happier turning 37. I’ve lived the heck out of my 37 years, and I have no regrets. (Mistakes, yes – regrets? No.) If God took me Home now, I’d be fully satisfied. I haven’t missed out on anything the world has to offer because my God – He is out of this world. My Father has blessed me with the desires of my heart: making it whole.

Lord, may my 37^th year of life be a living testimony, an aura of glory, pleasing to You and perfected in Your presence. I know I complain of loneliness now and then, and I still pray for an earthly husband, but honestly, with all my heart, You are enough. My Prince, You have already given me my Cinder37lla story, so I can’t even imagine the best that’s yet to come. <3

Even When It Hurts

Part of motherhood is the sword that pierces your own soul, too (Luke 2:35). 

I get that often enough to make it hurt – deeply. Words hit their mark, assignments sent to distract, disappoint and destroy. I think every one of them goes through this stage at some point, a wall of hatred and rejection, “I hate all of you!” and “I can’t wait to leave this place and be on my own” are the most recent. There’s also the “I don’t need you” and “I don’t want you” because “I am here because I had to be, not by my own choice.” Fortunately for me, I have the most magnificent armor, a prayer army of family and friends, and a love so resilient from a God who loves me like my own Hosea. My Lord is so close, and He speaks through my writing.

I had written out anger and poured out my hurt into my journal pages and then paused to ask for God’s truth, what does He say about this situation? I wrote with hands that were mine but words that were not my own:

“She is hurting. She is drowning in her own fear and tears. Carry her to Me. Only I can heal her. Only I can love her back into life again. Hold her for Me, Kate. Don’t scold her, just hold her. Be My physical body. I love you and have chosen you for such a time as this.”

Only because He loves me first can I love others even when it hurts.

"I have found the paradox. That if we love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt. Only more love." 

-Mother Teresa

 

When the World Stops

 Rays of gold and streaks of orange, this copper sun, setting like an African crown on the horizon, creating a magnificent backdrop to our basketball court.

A light breeze – no longer hot like the summer months when evening still holds the heat of the day.

A symphony of sounds – the birds chirping away like they own the place, not a worry in the world.

The touch of roughed up rubber, yet smooth from wear and the sound it makes dribbling the ball on the cracked cement.

The look of their smiles – oh their smiles – just a random afternoon of unplanned hoops with a few of my girls, and the feeling of their admiration at my “swish.” My soul smiles and pride of the past creeps in like the voice from the newscaster, “Hot-shooting Mary-Kate Martin hits another!” I may be old but I’ve still got it, I wink to myself.

She looks at me and says, “This is peace. This is the most peace I’ve felt in a long time.”

No words are necessary. Just the sounds of the ball on the cement, hitting the backboard, birds as our melody, a captivating sunset, and breath of heaven that prickles the skin.

The world stops in moments like this. Peace. Joy. Contentment. No “duties”, no “to-do” lists, no overwhelming feeling of time slipping away. Simply being present. Oh, the greatest present.

In moments like these, the world stops – joy is alive where peace resides.  

That Changes Everything

I never knew a piece of paper could change everything.

It doesn’t really change anything in the present, but it changes our future – it creates possibilities that were never there before, and with great possibility comes greater responsibility.

 This piece of paper, which looks nothing but common, is a court-order for my official guardianship of Lucia and Benji. I’ve been raising them no different than if they were my own regardless of having an “official” document, but it definitely changes their future! They can travel with me now, and I have more responsibility to commit to caring for them for the next ten years as well. Looking back at the last 8 here at Hosea’s Heart and looking ahead towards the next 10 has left me utterly anxious and stressed. Benji is now getting older and the girls coming into Hosea’s Heart are now around his age; he is no longer the cute baby boy. He is a growing boy and has much different needs than what is offered here at the girls home. The cases that we have received lately are horrific things done to toddler girls, that by age 7 they are conditioned to reenact the sexual violence that’s been done to them. We have to protect and provide healing for these girls just as much as I need to protect and provide for our only boy. I started thinking, do I need to move off site? Do I need to rent a house? Buy a house? How? With what funds? Can I build a different house still on campus but further away from the girls homes to create better boundaries and separation? Can I leave the girls home campus when I just moved here three years ago into a house I designed? A house that is small but perfectly conducive; it’s by no means perfect and there’s a million things I’d love to redo, but I still love it for all its coziness and the memories it already holds in just three years – it’s the hiding place, a place of bright colors and comfort, rest and fun that the girls get to come to when they need it, too.

 As I had been thinking ahead, all of my next step plans include the dream I’ve had from the beginning: a husband. And if you’ve been following my journey, you know this because I write about a future hubby all the time. Maybe I’ll get married soon and the husband will want to live offsite so that’s how we’ll buy a house and move. Maybe hubby will want to build our own house. Maybe hubby will be rich :P maybe hubby will be… hubby, hubby, hubby.  In my head, hubby was going to be the answer to all these problems. There was no “next level” in my thoughts about still being a single mom slaying life as it comes. Ha. No. Being a single mom was never, ever the dream.

 So I heard the Lord whisper, “All these plans of yours, Kate, include a future husband. What if there is no husband? Then what? Do you still want these plans? Do you still want to move offsite? What if you will still be single? Can you picture a life being single and happy?”

 No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “You would NOT do this to me, would you, God?!”

 In my journal I wrote:

28 June 2022

 Papa,

Would you really expect me to be single my whole life? Ever since that thought the other day, I’ve been shattered. Cried my eyes out – puffy and red – all day yesterday. I’ve lived my entire life dreaming of this future husband, and I’ve been content waiting because he is going to come eventually. I’ve been dreaming about guys ever since I was in kindergarten! (hehe) Had a crush on Troy, then next year Levi, then next year Dustin, then Eric, then Jake, then Shawn, then Nick, then another Nick, then Chris…and onwards it went into college. A new crush basically every year. And post college I kept dreaming next level = always a hubby. And it was all going to be worth it when he finally comes.

 But now? What if hubby never comes? What if it’s my plan and not yours, Lord? I must begin to picture my life as a perpetual single mother. That changes everything, Lord. I don’t want to move offsite, but how do I raise Benji? As a single mother, I still get scared and still need community; I still need family. Will I never get my twin boys? ;)

 I need to dream of my future being happy without hubby – satisfied in my singleness, not as temporary situation, but as a life ahead. Surrender hurts.

 In my vulnerable state, Satan took no delay in throwing in his own punches. Thoughts of self-doubt overwhelmed me. Am I a capable mother? Am I fit for this? If I travel and leave the kids behind now, is that appropriate? Would I do that to my own kids? If I take them with me to the States, will the other girls feel betrayed and upset? Will the kids’ mom and my first daughter reappear and reconnect? Will she blame me and hate me for being a mother she couldn’t? For giving her kids a chance she ran away from? Can I truly care for these kids and myself and the ministry on my own? What about home? Where is home now? Do I stay on campus or move off? When I am Stateside, is there room for me and two kids to appear in everyone else’s life and schedule and space that side? What if I fall for someone but he doesn’t want this life? What if someone falls for me, but it’s too complicated? Where is home? Where will home be? What is next, really?

 In my prayers, I like to imagine what God might say to me if we were talking face to face. So this is what came next:

“You are concerned with colors and walls and home(houses).

But I am the Colors, the Artist, the Creator, and the Builder.

I am the Head, your Husband Redeemer. I will give you everywhere you place your foot.

I am Home, the Healer, Redeemer, the Hiding Place. I will show you even greater things than this.

Come and follow Me. I am Home.

With Love, 

Papa - your Provider”

Going to confession and Mass the other day really changed my perspective, too. After getting off my chest a list of sins, the priest responded gently, “I sense a spirit of restlessness in you.” And he began speaking to that and encouraging me to rest in God’s love and peace for me. At the word “restlessness” a lightbulb went off. That’s exactly how I feel! But I hadn’t known how to put into words the anxious movements inside my chest. Then at Mass, the reading was from Luke 9. “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” (Luke 9:58).  

 Jesus had nowhere to rest his head. Even foxes and birds have homes, but for missionaries? It’s something we give up. Yet, I had forgotten that. As the priest shared the passage, he reminded us that while Jesus had nowhere to rest his head, his disciples did. He gave us the picture of John, his beloved disciple, who rested his head against the Savior’s chest at the Last Supper. What a beautiful picture of rest, of Home. And we are all invited into that rest, into that Home.  

 Instead of worrying so much about houses and walls and permanence, I needed to simply rest my head on my Savior’s chest and Trust Him.

 After reading a devotion on the story of Mary and Martha, I put myself in the scene and imagined what Jesus might say to me as the Martha of the story.

You take my hands in Yours and whisper, “Kate, Mary-Kate…you are anxious about many things, but only one thing matters above them all. Me and you. Come to Me, Kate. You are exhausted and burdened, and I will give you rest. Lean upon My shoulder. Listen to my heart beat for you. Spend an hour in my Presence, and you’ll spend the day in my glory. Mary-Kate Frances Martin, you are my delight. I marvel at you. Come, and let me love you. All my love, Jesus.”

 

The image stopped me in my tracks. God marvels at me?

28 June 2022

Jesus, sitting in your presence today is glorious. Away from shame and self-inflicting voices and accusations. Away from distractions. Immersed in You. I watched a small lizard, skin dazzling in the sun, with a stripe of yellow and all the tiny bumps and lines in its skin, watching an area of skin inflate and deflate on the side of its neck, watching it breathe – and being in awe of the Maker, the Artist, Elohim. Adonai, your attention to detail is enthralling. I was enthralled by the details of a tiny lizard.

Imagine. That’s how you feel about me, Jesus? Enthralled with me? Wow.

Now that – that changes everything.