And Jesus cries because He loves ‘em both

We've had a week of victory in the world of justice here at Oasis .  
     Truth has silenced lies ,
          Light has revealed darkness , 
               Evil has been bound and the innocent set free!

The same God who empowered a shepherd boy to slay a great and horrible giant has empowered our amazing , special , vulnerable little girls to stand up against their own terrifying , powerful giants . . .  and win .   Justice has won.  

I can't tell you how proud I am of our girls .  There are absolutely no words for it .  They have stared evil in the face and spoken truth .  Brave .  They have healed enough to see through the shame and threats and manipulation of past abuse and discover who they are . Courageous .  They are being made new .  They have said with confidence, "I am God's daughter .  I belong to a God of justice."  Friends, these little ones are Strong . 

It's been a pretty amazing week. 

But I wasn't prepared for the tide of emotions that came when I opened an article in the Prensa Libre covering the successful arrest of a couple of our girls' "bad guy."  H e a v e n   a n d   e a r t h .   Please pray before you open that link , if you open it.  In this corner of Guatemala, darkness has come to light and evil has been bound, and that is gloriously righteous!  But for this man, the darkness still holds him captive.  His soul is shattered-broken and evil wraps around his neck like a chain.  Oh, his face . . .  He is wicked.  
God loves him. 

He is wicked.  God loves him.  

How do you reconcile that?  God's infinite love and man's deep wickedness can only meet in one place : Jesus Christ hanging on a cross to pay for all of it.  That love is expensive.  

Will this man ever see how much he is worth?  Or will he go to his bitter grave refusing to accept the mercy God offers him?  My heart hurts for him.  My heart hurts for everything he has done to my sweet friends.  
Love is really expensive. 

I am wicked.  God loves me.   
You are wicked.  God loves you.

"… I wondered why
The good man died, the bad man thrives
And Jesus cries because he loves ‘em both
… "

 - Josh Garrels Farther Along

When it gets personal.

This is a post from Medical Team week back in November.  For more information about what that week is like on a practical level, I'll have to write a separate post.  =) 

. . .

This week made me think about what a difference it makes to have a connection to the people we work with, not just to the work we’re doing with them.   For example, I came to Guatemala to work with a ministry that helps girls and their families heal from life-shattering abuse.  Easily said. 

But I know Mercy*.  She came to us after spending a week in the hospital thanks to her abuser.   At the same time as we started praying for her surgery and recovery, we started praying for her sister Mara* to be rescued as well.   The sister that then came every visitor’s day for months and comforted Mercy when it was time for them to leave again, “You’ll be ok, Mercy.  It’s so nice here! Don’t cry, let’s go swing for a little bit.” 

 Now I know Mara, and when she showed up at the Oasis on Wednesday, what we do here became a thousand times more real.   I wanted to do a happy dance and cry at the same time.  I was a ball of excitement that broke down sobbing and ended up jumping, laughing, dancing.  How can you put words to it?  You’re safe, little one!  What you’ve had to live through to come here breaks .  my .  heart .   But tonight…  you’re safe.  

She’s not just a name.  She’s not just our 49th bed.  She’s an answer to prayer and a piece of my heart.   Abba, let the healing begin! 

* as always, the names used on this blog have been changed to protect our girls.  

12 hours later, we were back in Zapote.   In comes the woman we'd just seen yesterday.  The sweet, tiny, young mother of 3 whose womb has been bleeding for as many years… and whose soul has been bleeding for 30.  She asks the doctor about symptoms and medicine, but we all know there’s more to the story.  

Photo Credit: Stacy Carter-Studios

He asks the question and I pray desperately for ears to understand as she whispers out pain, and shame, and guilt, and desperation, and heartbreak, and hopelessness that I’ll never know.  She falters when the past is too much to remember, and surges of pain from the womb that weeps for her sometimes silence her altogether.  But she pushes on into a story of hope and power and faith and the miraculous hugeness of God Almighty, with redemption so beautiful that I want to sing!  But still there’s the look on her face every time she throws out a new evil that has blackened her story, wondering how we’ll take it.  The way she says that most people don’t believe it was ever that bad… nor that God was ever that good to her.   

We believe you, sister!  We’re not going to judge you.  How could we?  It is for this that Jesus Christ died. 

God's mission is so much bigger, so much more personal than I ever would have imagined.  It happens one person at a time, and every time it takes God himself stepping in to redeem what is broken.  It's absolutely amazing. 

Losing Control

I scheduled the next day at 11:59 pm, jam-packed for 14 hours out of the next 20.  Nothing big or significant, just a crazy end to what had been a stressful week.   Our girls were off in so many different directions that we’d plum run out of tías!   So I had agreed to play back-up, but everyone seemed to have a different idea of what that was going to look like... and none of those ideas seemed to consider the to-do list I had for myself that day.  To be perfectly honest, the official hour-by-hour plan included an optional 15 minutes to go cry in a corner.   

But can I tell you something?

This day that God gave me to live has honestly been one of the sweetest yet!  After pulling in to work way too early in the morning having forgotten both my computer and my phone (two things I always remember…) I got to spend the entire morning cuddled up on the couch reading children’s books & picture Bible stories with some of our younger girls.  We ran around outside in the cool, breezy sunshine.  We made up goofy line dances to Christian a capella music.   And that was how God gave his daughter four solid hours of quality time in one morning!  Wonder of wonders, there was no drama, no ugly words, no testing all the limits, and no serious medical emergencies.   

It was the day that God resolutely cleared my plate of things I didn’t need to do (even things that I really love doing) and filled it up with significance, unconventional productivity, and unexpected joy. 

We have such a wonderful Abba!  He really knows how to love his kids. 

Footprints

A very wise young woman encouraged me a while ago to choose special markers of God's love, little "mini altars" if you will, as a way to remember his faithfulness throughout the day when they show up in my life.  For her, it was hearts; heart-shaped leaves, heart-shaped rocks, heart-shaped spills, reminding her in every situation how much God loved her. 

For me, it has been footprints; in the wet sand on a beach, on decals stuck to the front of a bus, even little footprints of "Renae, I just couldn't hold it" tracked through the entire house, reminding me in every situation that God is with me.  It's like having a secret handshake with a close friend; the littlest thing can really make my day! 

That said, sometimes God goes beyond the simple-minded limits we so often choose to be satisfied with.  He is loving and faithful, but that doesn't necessarily mean predictable! 

Just the other week, on my way back from a short visa-renewal trip to Costa Rica, I was sitting at a familiar gate in Juan Santamaría International airport thinking about how odd it was to be flying from "not my country" to yet another "not my country".  Usually, sitting in an airport means that I'm about to see my family or that I just got to see my family for at least a little bit, and while I'd just spent a wonderful week with an old friend, there's nothing quite like the comforting feeling of home.  This was the first trip I've taken from one relatively unfamiliar place to another and back again, and it was a rather odd feeling!

Hiking Volcán Barva in Costa Rica

As I sat there talking to God about this temporary homelessness that is living in a foreign country, I started daydreaming about how nice it would be to see someone from home, from church maybe, because there's just something about being with someone who knows where you're from, not just where you are.  I racked my brain for reasons why anyone I could think of would be traveling through that tiny wing of Juan Santamaría . . . finding none, I settled back down to reading my book. 

Except it seems that God wasn't through with our conversation, because who should show up just then but the pastor of the little church I call home in barely-a-dot-on-the-map San Lucas!  God sent a kind greeting not from Ramsey, not from my physical family, but something better.  It was as if he had put his arm around me and whispered, "You have a new home now, with me, and your family is bigger than you could ever imagine!  I am your Father.  I take very good care of my daughters." 

And it's wildly true. 

Beautiful Things

We've been singing this song a lot lately at the Oasis.  It rings so true against the backdrop of our girls' stories that some days, I just cry.

And then there's God whispering hope through Isaiah, promising that it really is possible to redeem unimaginable loss.  In fact, He already sees the world as it one day will be. 

Isaiah 35:1-2

Imagine the wilderness whooping for joy, 
the desert’s unbridled happiness with its spring flowers.  
It will happen! 
The deserts will come alive with new growth budding and blooming, 
singing and celebrating with sheer delight. 

Just imagine it!  It will happen!  As far as God is concerned , it already has. 

The one where my friends do the leaving...

Goodbyes are hard, terrible, beautiful things.  

Letting something go that you'd rather have stick around,
the death of something that will never be the same,
the opportunity to welcome something new and do some growing yourself,
and a unique place to realize how much you appreciate people.   

All in all, I'd say saying goodbye is a pretty interesting process.  

Our girls say many goodbyes: to teams, interns, missionaries and even tías on occasion.  For the newer ones and the younger ones, all this coming and going takes a good deal of figuring out.  Every time someone leaves the Oasis, a sweet little pair of dark eyes looks up at me and asks, 

"When are you leaving?"

. . . and I don't know what to tell them.  

It matters, because loving and loosing hurts.  
 I want to say, "NEVER!  I will be with you forever!"  and I want to fly to Ramsey, MN like, oh, you know, YESTERDAY.  How long exactly am I going to be here?  Fantastic question. . . one to which I have absolutely no answer and for which I can't plan.  Right now, I'm living what is and trusting that God has the next steps taken care of.  But I still ask Him what the plan is at least once a day.  

In the mean time, I get to learn what it's like on the staying-side of leaving.  These girls are teaching me a lot.  

Lots of love from far away,
Renae

Take a Chance!

I wish there was a magic fairy-dust that you could sprinkle on yourself as soon as you decided to "work for Jesus" that would take away all the bad habits and false motives and lazy attitudes and leave you with nothing but joyful selflessness, good favor with everyone, and an extra heap of wisdom.  But at the same time? I'm very glad there isn't!  There is breathtaking beauty in the journey from Point A to Point B and it has a lot to do with depending on God every day because I don't have it all together!  

Sometimes I think we expect moving to a different place to come with at least a free sample of some such fairy-dust, but... it doesn't.  Wouldn't ya know, I moved all the way to Guatemala and I’m still the same Renae.  In a lot of ways, my life looks a lot like it did in the States.  Some nights, I stay up too late and sleep through my alarm in the morning.  I leave dirty dishes in the sink for too many days and it takes twice as long to clean them.  I wear my hair in odd up-dos at night so it will dry curly but some days it just doesn’t.  I spend too much time on some projects and then I have to rush to finish others.  I can’t decide which brand of peanut butter to buy at the store and just last week I let a sweet old lady at the market talk me into buying way too much broccoli for any one single person to consume and it’s going bad in my fridge because I just don't know what to do with it all!

Dance party in the kitchen! 

In a lot of ways, not much has changed! But at the same time, little by little, I’m learning about how trauma affects children and what we can do to help them.  Little by little, I’m learning how to love people who are really difficult and confusing to love, how to set good boundaries for myself and also for the girls I interact with who don’t yet have their own moors.  Little by little, I'm learning how to share truth when it’s time to share truth and how to listen when it’s time to listen.   And in the learning, I mess it all up.   
Mucho.  
Often.  
Because as much as I would like to get it right the first time, I’m quite human.  I quite honestly don’t know what to do in many, many situations every single day. But even there… there’s something fragile and weak and dependent and beautiful about who God made me to be. At the end of the day, I’m a recovering rebel who is loved by a holy God. In each and every daily, boring, exciting, overwhelming thing that comes up, I have a chance to see God’s strength perfected in the filling of my weaknesses. Am I willing to take it?
 

Love from a very weak, very happy 23-yr-old!

“My salvation and my significance depend ultimately on God; the core of my strength, my shelter, is in the True God.”   Psalm 62:7