Some have asked,

”How do you not lose hope?”

”How do you not become consumed when you’re constantly faced with brokenness and need?

You have told me your own stories.

I’ve heard about wounds in very deep places. 

You know because you have felt it yourselves.

Trauma is contagious.

Compassion fatigue and secondary trauma are very real.

Every medical doctor lives knowing their potential to catch the very diseases they work to heal. 

We live knowing that we too can catch the very diseases - cynicism, defeat and despair and more - we pray to be healed in the souls of those we care for.

No one wants to think of walking with the wounds and pain of others day after day only to emerge unrecognizable with gnarled and twisted spirits. 

No one wants to be so filled with the images of trauma that we lose our ability to see the goodness of God. 

No one wants to think of becoming so calloused that we shut out anything that could even tug at our compassion. 

We know this would be the worst.

 In fleeing the brokenness of others we would run from our very own selves. 

No one wants to live with the stench of death in their nose long after the carcasses have been carried away.

*********************

The young woman sat across from me. 

We slowly sipped cups of chai and talked happily about life. 

The birds were singing.

My children jumped with her son nearby on the trampoline. 

The setting felt peaceful and safe. 

I asked if she had any challenges and a shadow fell over her face. 

I could see she was stressed. 

A hijab framed her beautiful features.

 I leaned closer as her words became more quiet. 

She told me the sad story of a sister who would leave their home hours after dark to return in the morning. 

At first my brain couldn’t process what I was hearing.

I had been so excited for the sisters. 

Though they were abandoned by their husbands they joined hands to help each other survive. 

I cheered them on when they started cooking food to sell by the roadside.

God blessed them.

Now they had enough to feed their children each day. 

She was so happy when she started reading the Bible. 

“I never knew I could be forgiven!”  

She showed me pages in a notebook filled with her favorite verses. 

We prayed together more than once. 

She wasn't a believer but I knew God was working in her life. 

I understood why she was so disturbed. 

She couldn’t believe her sister would leave her own child night after night. 

She never thought she could willingly choose a living death. 

I asked how her sister had entered the world of prostitution. 

She answered “You know him.”

A young man in the neighborhood had shown the girls pornographic material on his phone. 

Not just once, but many times. 

He held out a promise. 

If they could do these same things they would make lots of money. 

Much more money than if they spent their days cooking by the side of the road. 

We prayed together against the evil. 

Long after she went home I still felt an intense mixture of swirling emotions.    

I had my own feelings of anger, grief and frustration.  

My mind couldn’t process it all. 

Just down the street were so many children I knew by name. 

How could they be recruited by such darkeness? 

I wondered about the school girls who knocked on our gate as they walked by on their way home from school.  

How far had the evil spread?

I prayed for them.

I thought of the young men who were grooming girls to sell their bodies and soul. 

Even they were stamped with the image of God. 

I prayed for them too.

I desperately cried to God,

“Lord, whoever the ringleader is let him ask to go to church with us this week.” 

I don’t know if my faith was even the size of a mustard seed. 

*******

I won’t begin to act like I know the best path to maintaining our bodies well. 

I am still learning. 

I don’t always remember to take my vitamins and I really should get more sleep each night. 

But when the stench of death becomes too strong I know it’s time to turn the music loud and lift my hands and voice in worship. 

When the images of terrible things start to torment my quiet moments its then I need to shift my view and chase beauty- everywhere and anywhere. 

A few minutes watering plants or just looking extra long into my children’s faces. 

Whatever reminds me of goodness and beauty.

Whatever can point my soul back to God.

When I begin to feel exhausted inwardly and can’t relax it’s time to take a step back and rest. 

Jesus slept peacefully in a crisis while the boat was filling with water.

No one was created to be on call twenty-four hours a day.

Sometimes in groans in the night and other times in inaudible whispers I pray.

I soak in beautiful promises like Romans 8.

 “The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.

For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for.

But the Holy Spirit prays for us …” 

And I celebrate everything and with anyone who joins.

In offering the steaming cup of chai or the shared meal around our long table my spirit is renewed.

I am blessed.

“Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.”

-Henri Nouwen

******

The next afternoon was Bible study. 

It was normal to open the gate and find children waiting for a ride. 

There was a young man with them.

 I hadn’t seen him for a long time.

I would have never imagined him joining us that day.

He’d greet me at times as I passed him by on the road.

I’d grieve as I see the marks of sin on the contours of his face.

It broke my heart to think he could be peddling darkness. 

Had God so quickly answered my desperate prayer?

*******

“Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations.

How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives.”

-Henri Nouwen

I remember yesterday

and the day before with its

amazing answers to prayer

and miraculous provision.

I’m so glad that I know God is already at work in the lives of everyone I meet. 

When I start to feel it’s all up to me it’s time to remind myself the work is the Lord’s.

I’m just privileged to join Him as I love others. 

I think of Jesus.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…” Is 53:4

He walked through everything hard we ever could face.

When the stench of death becomes too strong I stop and hand all my burdens to God. 

This is how to thrive in body and soul.

This is how not to be consumed by the darkness. 

This is the way to never lose hope. 

“He has taught me that if I am supposed to endure and not get twisted in the darkness, I need two things. One of course, is to stay very close to Him.  Two… I must pursue the antidote for the poison I encounter in this world. That antidote is beauty - His beauty.”

-Diane Langberg 

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