A Few More Sweet Faces

This picture above is of all the kiddo's that we were directly responsible for last week with the exception of Carlitos. He is who knows where in this picture. From left to right there names are Bryan, Byron, Normita, Alex, Kathy, and Chevy. Are they not just adorable? We have joked several times about all sorts of experiences we had with them this week. From the sweet sweet smell of baby lotion after bathtime where you want to just snuggle them to death. To little boys making designs of who knows what in the toilet during pee pee time. We wiped more little tooshies and touched more snot than we know what to do with. We said "NO" at least 3 billion times. We fed bottles and got smeared with baby food. We got frustrated and thought what in the world have we gotten ourselves into? But when it came time to say goodbye there were tears on both of our cheeks. They wormed their way right into neat places in our hearts and it didn't take long.

Well this picture above is of the youngest children that are at Jimmy Hughes children's home. They are both about a year old. The little girl in the pink on the left is the one that just fell in love with Karen and held onto her all week for dear life. Carlitos in the highchair on the right is a little pistol. His mom was a crack addict and so he is extremely hyperactive but has a smile that wraps you around his little hyperactive finger. :) The picture at the top right is of my buddy Bryan and the daughter of an ex-prostitute/crack addict who now lives in the home and helps take care of the children. This little girls name is Chevon. She's beautiful and is miraculously healthy and well although her mother did drugs the entire time she was pregnant. God protected her for sure.

This ministry started out as a rehabilitation center for people who need help with various types of addictions and disorders. It is a fantastic operation that not only heals people, but allows healed people to help heal others. Every single person I worked with this week has been through rehab for one reason or another. I heard their stories as we asked and they were willing to share. I stood beside drug addicts and prostitutes and I have never in my life been more proud to call what I was a part of “ministry.” It was exactly what I feel like Jesus would have termed an overflow of grateful hearts. I’m not sure exactly what the verse about loving much because you were forgiven much was directly pertaining to, but I know that I saw alabaster jars wide open and empty this week because they have poured out their love for Christ on these children. It was absolutely beautiful. They were no longer the outcast, they were no longer someone with a disease or an addiction or a disorder, they were now able to be part of the cure.

I heard it best from a 15 year old girl I met while working with the babies. She is a beautiful young girl who isn’t in school right now because she is in trouble and not able to go back for a time until she proves herself to have a changed heart. She got sent to work with the babies as a punishment and in her own words she told me…”I was sent here to work with the children as a punishment but they have really touched my heart and I found it was my medicine.” Her name is Seun and she connected to that part of my heart that is determined to pray daily. My prayer is that her rebellious spirit will be conquered by the compelling love of a cross and the One who died upon it. I told her I would be praying every day for her. We definitely had some heart connecting moments where she told me her life story of being horribly abused and abandoned by her parents when she was 6 years old and how she has such a hard time believing that God exists sometimes because she’s prayed every single day for her father and he hasn’t changed one bit yet. So how could she believe He was really up there and that He was ever listening to her?! She was adopted by American Christian missionaries and was treated poorly by them too. God's goodness doesn't add up in her head right now.

I’m convinced that there are moments when you are silenced by your own inadequacies to look into the heart of someone else’s pain and attempt to explain a God that doesn’t make sense to them. I’m learning that that is not my job…to explain God or make sense of Him to someone else, but if I had all the money in the world and could have paid for an answer or given my right arm to find one for this sweet gal, you can rest assured I would have done either. She speaks perfect English and is extremely intelligent. I pray her potential is one day realized. Hurts in her heart a mile wide and a mile deep and questions only God Himself could ever answer. Shewwwwww…

Then there is Nora the crack addict who when asked to tell her story told about her two year old daughter who now lives with her grandfather because her life was such a disaster that she couldn’t care for her, who raised her arms as if she had just won the gold medal in an Olympic contest when she said “and now 9 months of victory with God.” She wakes up voluntarily at 4 am every morning to go pray with some other staff members and comes back by 4:45 to help the girls get a shower and do their hair and gets them ready for school. She then gets them off to school, does the laundry for the girls room, cleans their bathroom, and then goes to work at the mission house (rehab center) all day and comes back at 3:30 to help the kids with homework, clean up at night, puts them to bed, all with a smile on her face. To see her with these children is one of the most precious sights I have ever seen. A broken life redeemed by Jesus and being used to drench these children with His love is a take off your sandals sort of sight.

Or Blythe the gypsie/crack addict/prostitute who lived on the streets moved every few weeks and turned tricks to make enough money to survive. She has a daughter who is 2 now and she used drugs while she was pregnant with her and by a miraculous act of God her daughter is beautiful and healthy and now thanks to God, so is she.

Or Roy the 28 year old guy, who was a crack addict, who is now the supervisor in the boys room who is a role model extraordinaire and is investing into these boys life in precious precious ways. When sharing his story with Karen and my overhearing from a table nearby he said…”I owe the change in my life first of all to God but then to my mother because every night when I came in late she would be praying…she was always praying for me.” Talk about a changed heart. And the confirmation of the tremendous power of prayer. He is wonderful and dedicated and devoted in ways you rarely see. He understands grace and doesn't take it for granted.

So many stories behind each life. Unbelievable how you come face to face with the fact of the world’s brokenness and God’s healing all in the same instant looking into the same eyes. Heard kiddos stories that just about did me in. Like the little girl who showed up almost bald because her mother pulled out handfuls of her hair at a time by swinging her around in the air and throwing her into a wall, who is having a very hard time not doing sexually perverse things because of how badly she was abused. A beautiful little girl who came and for 2 months wouldn’t speak to a soul because she had withdrawn so far within herself that she wasn’t willing to let herself out. Who now is one of the most loving little girls you’d ever see who hugs me every morning and kisses my cheek each night before bed.

Or the brother and the sister who came to the home after watching their mother be murdered and gutted in front of them. Or...the list could go on and on and on! Every single one of the 25 children who live there has a difficult story behind their very young life.

I guess I say all of that to say this...if you hear nothing else from what I shared in this very long post I pray with all of my heart you hear this. Please do not read these stories with a disconnected heart from a faraway place and resolve in your mind that "these" people and "these" things happen in third world countries and not in our "safe", "wealthy", "free", ... country and thus no need for you to act or become concerned where you are. I learned this week that there isn't a life God can't redeem no matter how HORRIBLE it may look and now hopeless it may seem...BUT it takes someone willing to get their hands dirty in the mud pit and their heart close enough to connect before it happens. I'm afraid that sometimes we hole ourselves up in our clean houses and our safe places attempting to stay protected and clean. Myself certainly included. I guess God is just asking some really difficult questions of my heart...like Jen how many nights do you think Jesus went to bed without His hands dirty from touching a leper or someone's uncleanness or his heart broken by someone else's pain? Jen do you really mean you want to walk in the footsteps of my Son or is that a good phrase you've learned somewhere that you flippantly toss around without a lot of thought about the cost those steps paid? Jen are you willing to leave your clean places to get your hands dirty and are you willing to let your heart get close enough to people who hurt in ways you cannot fathom and feel their pain? I'm beginning to learn He offers each of us the opportunity to be His disciple but that word doesn't mean what we've cheapened it to mean. It's an all out war to trace His steps in the middle of a broken world and it costs us everything we've got. Our comforts, our time, our energy, our heart, and perhaps most difficult of all it costs the sacrifice of status quo for a new way of thinking and living. One that lots of other people won't understand. That's ok.

Guess I'm just learning that I have an invitation to "enter in" to this redemption process. To be a tool God uses to reach out to broken people in a broken world. To allow His love to become so real to me that I am able to love the untouchable, the outcast, the sin soaked soul who feel as though they are beyond hope. To make a difference in the world because I choose not to back out but choose to enter in. I always have another choice. I can do what I've always done. I can stereotype the drug addicts and the prostitues and the single mom's who got pregnant without being married. I can talk about the drunk, or the impure relationships, or the sin that is in front of my face without ever allowing the heart of the sinner to sink into mine. I can categorize the sin and see the filth without ever looking into the pain in their face. I can help silence the gospel and the sick people Jesus came to make well, or I can help silence the critic of a gospel that has become far too much for cleaned up people in nice little church buildings on padded pews. I can enter in or I can back out but I am convinced with all of my heart that if I ever hope to live a life that makes one iota of a difference for my Redeemer I better decide to enter into His redemption process and get my hands dirty.

I pray we all look for ways to enter in. There are people hurting all around us. May our eyes be open and willing to see them...really see them. Not their sin, not their reputation, not their horrible track record. May we be able to picture them wrapped up in the arms of Christ and be willing to help them find Him so that He can work on their broken places and heal the wounds. It's what He came for and it's the business He asked us to be about!

Let's get busy loving them like Jesus...MAY WE ALL BE WILLING TO GET DIRTY!!!