Oasis

A few weeks ago, I had the honor and privilege of interpreting one of my absolute favorite stories of all time:

God's Oasis Story.

I don't know if I can put into words what it was like to take a private tour through so many interviews that touched the very heart of our ministry at Oasis, but I'm going to try! 

First, it was a blast to work with the talented group of people who came to produce the video and to see what goes in to a project like this. We were blessed by the generous heart of a man who runs a similar ministry in the States who gathered the support to send this team our way.  It was special to see a small group of people get to know our ministry for the very first time and to watch them open their hearts to the bigness of what God is doing, without assuming or judging or short-cutting the deepness of what it means to live life at the Oasis.

Then there are the times that sharing stories of hope means uncovering the details of darkness so that others will see just how beautiful is the light. I cannot think of a story I would rather enter into at such a personal level, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't cry myself to sleep, hard, after some of these days.

But by far the most humbling and amazing part of that whole week was listening to story after story after story that put God on display in the mightiest of ways!  I'm still in awe.

I felt completely inadequate sitting down and pressing play on each interview with one of my dear, sweet, brave little sisters, about to take her words into my mind and into my heart and make them my own. 

These girls can say things that I will never be able to say. 

They have broken in ways that I have never broken. 
They have forgiven more deeply than I have ever been offended.
They have healed more than I have ever hurt. 
They have surrendered themselves to God and received life in place of death.

 And there we were, hearing the account of God's faithfulness step-by-step, word-by-word.

My heart could just explode!

Their stories are sacred. Hearing them is to walk on holy ground. God is present in this place and His glory is on full display. 

 
Pain.

"My dad used to abuse me."
"My mom didn't care. I never mattered to her."

Brokenness.

"I was abused for 7 years by a man I didn't know."
"Her dad abused her sexually and made her brother abuse her." 

Hope.

"I received justice at the other home, because they took me out of [that situation], but not like the justice we receive at the Oasis. This is the kind of justice where God heals your heart."

Mercy.

"My dream is for my dad to know God, and repent of the evil things he's done, and find forgiveness."
"She came in the room with her head held high, looked him in the eye and said, 'I forgive you for everything you did to me.'"

Grace.

"I felt clean and pure. It's like you're re-born in the eyes of God."
"I am a daughter of God."

Joy.

"God answers our prayers. Even when we fail him, he is faithful! His mercies new every morning and he is worthy of our worship!"

Abba, you are so, so good!!

It's easy to focus on the girls who are still broken. They are still angry. They are still hurting. They are confused. They are so lost.

But, God is here. Immanuel.

We have many girls who are learning. They are starting to see new things. They are beginning to think new thoughts. They are walking in new ways. They are growing.

Immanuel.

But because God is rich in grace and infinitely merciful, we have girls who have been redeemed! They are clean and they know it. They speak the truth and are not afraid. They are forgiven, and they have forgiven others. They are free!  Oh, it's just so beautiful.

Immanuel.

Watch the final product here! 

¡Dios Me Ama!

I'm going to do my very best to translate to English a song that says the most beautiful thing in Spanish... especially when it's sung by 50+ very special girls.   

Aun siendo así pobre pecador, 

Dios me ama
Siendo imperfecto, aun sin merecerlo, 

Dios me ama
Si yo estoy fuerte, si yo estoy de pie, 

Dios me ama
Si estoy débil, si yo estoy caído 

Él no me dejará de amar

Sin su amor,

Sin su perdón,

No sé que sería de mi.  

Dios me amó tanto que entregó a su hijo para morir en mi lugar

Dios me ama, 

y su amor es tan grande incondicional,
Dios me ama, 

y siempre está con sus brazos abiertos a mi

... ... ... ... ...

I am a sinner, worthlessly poor,

but God loves me.  

Even though imperfect, although I don't deserve it, 

God still loves me.  

When I'm standing strong, and when I'm running well,

God loves me.  

When my faith weakens, and I have fallen down,

God you will never let me go.   

Without his love,

and forgiveness,

I do not know where I would be.  

God loved me so much that he gave his son to die in my place!  

God loves me!

and his love is so great and unconditional,

God loves me!

and his arms are always open to welcome me home.  

It is the greatest desire of my heart for each and every one of my Oasis sisters to know this truth.  May they rest in it, rejoice in it, and pass it along from heart to heart until the whole world knows how great is the God that loves them!  

 

ReMoved

I came across this video a couple of months ago.  It does an amazing job of capturing what so many of our girls have felt when they are ReMoved to Oasis.  Please take a few minutes and listen to what it's like to be a vulnerable child in a broken world.  
 

So much insight!  

Life is messy.  
Hard issues are never cut-and-dried.  
Healing is complicated.  
Trust is risky.  

God is gentle.  
He is wise.  
He understands.  
He is powerful.  
He restores.  

Love takes sacrifice. 

It is such a blessing to work in a place where we get to see this whole cycle take place!  The anger and shame and confusion changes to peace and trust and forgiveness because God is a mighty warrior against injustice on behalf of his beloved kids!  God the good Abba who loved me at my worst and choses to redeem me into His best.  Amen!!

Home.

Living in Guatemala, I spend a lot of time subconsciously trying to figure out which culture of the many that surround me I should "be," and possibly even more time making myself decide where to call home. 

As a bridge-builder at heart, I want to be able to cross over completely and BE chapina.  I've chosen to live here for the time being and I want this world to make sense and feel like home.  I want to pull out a flawless accent and witty vernacular and prove that I'm one of "us," that I "get it."  I don't like being different, in the other-than and apart-from sense of the word; it makes me feel discounted. 

However, the part of me that did in fact grow up entirely a US citizen and spent all-but-the-entirety of my developing years in one town and one small sub-culture of close-knit people who all speak with the same accent of our common language is still fairly certain that life would be immensely more comfortable there.  But somehow, to embrace that, I have to leave this behind, and to embrace this, I have to forsake that. Right?

Here I sit, asking constantly if I should sacrifice all the old and join myself to the new (and how long would that really take?) while all the while I fully realize that I'll never erase 22 years spent in another world, and if that were ever God's plan, I wouldn't have been born there in the first place!  

I've convinced myself that I have to be one thing or the other.  It's as though every time a piece of gringo shows up (which, let's be honest, is preeetty often), it overwhelmingly discounts all the little pieces of chapina that I've worked so hard to learn.  The tiniest piece of my not-so-former self can make me feel like I've failed at something that God has never asked of me to begin with. 

Slowly, I'm learning that to love someone doesn't mean I have to become them. 

Yes, Jesus became human.  But he never quit being God.  Not even for a second.  And just for good measure, you couldn't really make a case for him fitting in as a normal human while he walked this green earth any more than you could make a case for Renae Wolf fitting in as a normal Guatemalan in San Lucas.  But did Jesus ever love us!  He brought to bear every ounce of who he was, and sacrificed, and understood even when he was misunderstood, and loved us! 

Can I tell you how comforting that is??  This life can be done.

My prayer is no longer that God would "make me a Guatemalan," or even that he would make me a "not American" (more on that here).  My prayer is that the Master of culture-crossing and the Creator of my heart would speak to me every day the Truth of who I am.  I want to learn the ins and outs of my home culture as God's daughter and a citizen of Heaven who is desperately longing for Home.  

"But we are citizens of heaven, exiles on earth waiting eagerly for a Liberator, our Lord Jesus the Anointed, to come and transform these humble, earthly bodies into the form of His glorious body by the same power that brings all things under His control." 

- Paul, to the Philippians

How big would the box have to be?

Traveling outside of your home country has a way of opening your mind.  Living outside of your home country has a way of messing with it.  

Little did I know that the day I flew out of MSP for GUA, I'd essentially traded in my personal identity for a laundry list of "All Americans do/say/are ________ ."  To nearly every person I meet, I am a 180 cm blonde gringa with a crazy accent and no prayer of ever looking like I belong here.  Almost conclusively.  As such, there are several more assumptions that can pretty easily be made about what kind of person I am, what I like and dislike, and whether or not we could ever understand each other and be friends.  Some may very well line up with reality, but some are FAR, far from the truth, and only the most open of hearts will ever stick around long enough to tell the difference.  

I can't tell you how many people have walked away satisfied with a rather odd idea of who I am or what I'm doing here.  ( Nor could I tell you how many times I've done the same thing to someone else who seemed to fit into one of my pre-fab boxes! )  

I don't want to be lumped in with everyone else who has the same color hair as I do.  I don't love it that people I haven't met will assume that I don't make any sense just because I have blue eyes.  I miss the identity that used to be based on who I really was... so I start to do some really strange things -- Just to distance myself from "them" with whom I have been inescapably lumped.  I start to do things that don't make sense.  Like speaking Spanish to English speakers.  Or not claiming to be an American during grouping activities.  Or ignoring foreign visitors who probably need a friendly face. Or any number of other awkward things I've done that just don't deserve to be mentioned, but were equally as unnecessary! 

And it's not because I hate my country!  I just can't handle the us / them wall that goes up around me when I choose the English-speaking side of the room, and there's this atomic-strength pulse inside of me that really badly wants to prove that I'm not just an American.  ¡Muchá, I'm a person!  A woman, a sister, a thinker, a listener, a musician, a snarky jokester, a daughter, a mentor, a learner, an explorer, a sinner and a Christ-follower.  And YES, a long-time resident of the great state of Minnesota, a German/Irish/Welsh/Whoknowswhatelse European (see what I did there?), and an American.  ALL of those things and more.  And I'm not the same as everyone else from any given one of the groups I've come from. 

I am learning what it feels like to be in the minority.  I live a golden life by any standard, and it's still not easy.  Prejudice comes in many shapes and sizes; it is at best annoying and at worst painfully degrading.  Let's be careful with our boxes, friends.  I have yet to meet a person who fits really well inside of one.  

Some of the amazing girls from church who have gone a long way to explore my "box" and make me feel like family.  ¡Las quiero mucho!

A Gentle Reminder

La Vía Dolorosa

I had the privilege of going with a handful of our girls to a vivid presentation of God's love for us and the price he paid for our freedom.  Sitting amongst a pile of friends, babies, and small children is my new favorite way to enjoy all angles of God's story.  Did I mention that there were babies??  Sweet, precious Arquilla babies and their beautiful, brave, young, learning about life the hard way mammas.  We had a lovely evening together. 

I also had the privilege of walking with one of our girls through a crowded auditorium - once toting the diaper bag and once holding her baby.  Now, if there's one thing living in Central America has gotten me used to, standing out and having random strangers downright stare at you is definitely close to the top of the list.  Not a day goes by where someone doesn't bluntly point out that I'm very different from everyone else in this country.  Thank you, I'm going to choose to embrace that.  But let me tell you, we got some looks walking through that auditorium; the kind of looks that make my "mother bear" realize it's Spring time.  

Yes, ma'am.  This girl is very obviously a new, inexperienced mother.  Good catch!  You have probably also noticed that she doesn't exactly have a diamond ring on her finger.  

But ma'am?  

You know absolutely nothing else about her!  Maybe she is a foolish girl seducing for love in all the wrong places.  But I'm here tonight with a friend who had been through hell and back before she even qualified as a teenager, who made it out on the other side with another life depending on her for the safety she didn't even have herself, and that's all the compassion you can shoot her way?  Impressive.  I realize we just crossed your path, but I sincerely doubt that that gave you the whole picture you needed to judge appropriately.

At about this point, I realize that I'm doing the same thing I'm mad at "those people" for doing: drawing conclusions about someone's character without bothering to meet my fellow God's-image-bearer.  Ouch.  

All of this going down as the greatest story of God's grace plays on in the background.  Good heavens, do we ever need that grace! 

So Renae, before you pounce, take a second to pray
and before you assume, please ask
and if that second pause only makes you mad, 
go ahead and take an hour or two at the feet of the man who had to die just to save you...

until you can come to the point of rejoicing in God's grace

... For "creepy-looking guy" loafing outside the grocery store
... For the mom who smells like smoke and is yelling at a kid
... For the rich couple who just zoomed by you on the highway 
... For the pregnant teen who looks like she's enjoying herself
... and for the tall woman sitting in front of you with a noisy baby =)

and take a reminder to be gentle. 

Matthew 6:22

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