My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.

Our first stop in Uganda was a joy-filled face and a piece of land brimming with possibility. She sat on a mat on the floor next to the beans she was drying. Her eyes, her words and her voice celebrated our presence in her humble, welcoming home.

Teopistar’s words tumbled out in Lugandan, and, through a translator, we heard a story that was somehow laced with hopes and dreams.

Without flinching… well, without her flinching, she said, “I am HIV positive. My husband died because of the sickness and left me with nothing. I had so many small children, and no way to provide.”

I had to remind myself to breathe.

Not because I was sitting with a woman infected with those three letters that come to steal, kill and destroy… but because I was sitting with a woman whose identity, hope and joy was NOT infected by HIV.

She spoke with no shame.

Her face was not covered with those weary, shame-laden trenches that I know so well. She was not aged far beyond her years on behalf of her burdens and her body’s condition. Teopistar’s voice… her laugh… sang a freedom song. “God is so faithful and has provided for me so much.”

She walked us around her land where she grew and sold vegetables in order to expand onto the one-

room home she was left with. Not only does she have enough space for her family now, but she is also building extensively and renting out rooms. One of her daughters greeted us with a smile and showed us her brand-new graduation picture. She wants to open her own cosmetics shops one day.

I was floored.

This is not what I know. This is not what I understand.

In South Africa, you don’t talk about “that condition”. You don’t even use the word “sick”. You don’t ask how someone died. You don’t use any letters… not HIV, not TB, no positives or even negatives.

In South Africa, you can see the stigma smeared on their faces.

Or their secrets stay buried and the sickness spreads.

But there’s no freedom.

And there’s no hope-songs, no glory-giggles, no dream-daring.

Teopistar laughs and hugs. And she smiles.

Later, on that same day, we went to Jane’s house. Jane wasn’t feeling well that day, but it didn’t stop her from welcoming us, sitting down with us and sharing every detail of her story.

“My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.”

Same freedom voice. Same freedom smile. Just like Teopistar.

Also like Teopistar, Jane is a widow. She was left with six young children and incredibly destitute conditions.

The events of her lifetime were flogged with loss.

The story she told was narrated with faith.

I could not make sense of this reality I had entered into with a handshake, a hug and a genuine, “You are most welcome.”

But I could identify abundant life.

 I could see that Jane was living in something… It’s the same thing that I have been sitting on my comfy couch with my over-sized coffee mug and iPod, and begging God for.

I could hear that her heart, her words, and her eyes were set on the glory of God… not on the afflicted child wrapping himself around John, not on the cramps in her stomach, not on the things or the people she could not have in that moment.

I knew the letters written on her medical chart and the letters that could have been written on her husband’s grave… but I looked up in that little living room, and I saw the letters Jane had written on the wall.

And then, while telling the most excruciating part of her life-story, she said the words that are re-writing everything in me.

“I went down into the lowest pit of HIV/AIDS… 

And it was all for the glory of God.”

And Jane smiled.

Jane began our conversation that day with, “My name is Jane, and I am HIV positive.” And she ended it with that smile and that satisfied promise, “It was all for the glory of God.”

That’s it. That’s abundant life. That’s what’s really true, Jane.

Jane still has HIV. Jane still has sick kids and not enough of a lot of things.

Jane has what’s really real – and she has it for eternity.

It always starts right here in the present-tense, with names and circumstances and comings and goings.

But I want to my story to end with that smile and that hope.

I’m not sitting on my couch and begging for it anymore.

I’m welcoming people in to see what’s written on my walls, no matter what I feel like today.

I’m praying for a heart and a mind and a smile like Teopistar’s and Jane’s.

I’m exchanging the words of my story in the name of the One who exchanged his life for mine.

I’m smiling and I’m telling the story that goes, “And it was all for the glory of God.”