Standing with the Space-Maker

A little girl watched them all fall away in the midst of the pulsing, ravaging HIV crisis in this land. By the time she was 12-years old, she was left alone in a shack to raise her 8-year old brother. That was in 2006, and now that little girl has her own little girl. At the age of 21, she is desperate to pass grade 10 so she can complete school and make a better way for her family. 

Last week, we started a tutoring program for her family and another family with a similar set of circumstances. We loaded seven of them and their ginormous backpacks into our vehicles, and they sprawled out their insecurities, questions and calculations with visiting mission teams at the Ten Thousand Homes base.

After she finished her homework, I took that 21-year old girl for a walk to the construction site for my new house. I couldn’t help but think back to 2011 when we built her house. Some of my most powerful memories in this country are when we went to her construction site every week with truckloads of people to sing, dance, teach God’s word, and bring that Kingdom down as those walls went up. Here’s a story about it. That was real-life church in the yard.  

I stood there in my own pile of bricks with the girl whose house we sang up in 2011. She popped out her hip and didn’t skip a beat, pointing to the pile of dirt that will become the bedroom she would like to spend the night in. Then I watched all the sass and silliness melt away as we stood under that doorframe and she said, “Kacy. I dream my mother.”

This young un-mothered mother who just tries to keep her head above water, much less pass that geography test, poured out her secret dreams of her mother crying from her grave. She shared, for the first time ever, the story of her mother dying in her 12-year old arms.

I have nothing to offer in these moments.

We stood together in the messy place that is becoming a house.

And I had nothing to offer except standing together.

I stayed up late and woke up early thinking about that moment she trusted me with. I don’t understand why there’s so much broken or why she trusted me with those stories. But God is making space for them.

…..

The very next day, a woman walked into the churchyard with a smile on her sweat-beaded face as she pushed an un-toddling toddler up the bumpy hill in a wheelchair.  This is a lady who’s been in hiding as we’ve watched her older 3 children struggle and starve. She locked herself up in the self-made prison of shame in the formerly-beautiful home we built a few years ago.

We never saw her new baby for the first 2 years of her life, but had only heard a rumor there was a new family member. For some reason, now this mother has emerged, and we can see this immobile, unseeing baby girl with a spinal cord injury is the object of her affection.

I wanted to pounce her and kiss her and do a dance around her when she entered that church gate. SHE CAME! I didn’t even care why she had come.

She came.

I figured that, after two years of locking her door and pretending she wasn’t home when she saw my Condor, I should play it cool and just bring her a chair and a plate of food instead of going in for the kiss on the lips. (That’s real self-control in action.)

She speaks no English, so I just lingered long enough for her to know she’s worth lingering and loving. Not long later, a young woman from the church came to me to tell me why that mother had come. She had found work and wanted someone… someone white... someone who is me… to care for her baby full time while she worked.

I was shocked.

This mother has taken great measures to not see me, know me or be known by me for years, despite her incredible need and great effort on my part.

Now she was reaching out and trusting me with the most treasured part of her life. I was devastatingly humbled. I stayed up late into the night wanting to give up every other responsibility I have in this world to take care of this little girl’s broken body and to acknowledge this mother’s reach. Instead, we will stand together with her and pray for the right resources and the right support system for this family to thrive. Please pray with us for this.

I have no idea why she came or where she got the strength to reach. It didn’t come from her prison house, and it didn’t come from me. God is making space.

He’s lengthening, and He’s strengthening. He’s building up His Family, even when His kids have nothing to offer and when His households are messy. I’m going to stop trying to understand or trying to build up a storehouse of things to offer. I’m going to spend myself standing together in messes and in beautiful.

He’s going to keep making space that I don’t know what to do with.

And that is beautiful.

"Enlarge the place of your tent,

and let your habitations be stretched out;

do not hold back; 

lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes...

For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

and my covenant of peace shall not be removed," 

says the Lord who has compassion on you

from Isaiah 56

Grace Puddles

This morning we woke up to an incredible amount of pee.  

Lifa walked out of his room naked, dazed and dripping. BUCKETS of pee. His first words of the morning: “Go look at my bed!”

AN OCEAN. Standing water. In his bed.

And by water, I mean pee. This is my real life.

So, like any responsible mom would do, I busted out the baby wipes and wiped that little boy down till he smelled just like a clean baby’s butt. Because we also woke up to a house with no running water.

As I pulled out wipe after wipe, I remembered all the moments and memories that were far more repulsive and inconvenient than this one. I remembered Lifa’s night terrors and going days without sleeping because he was afraid to. I remembered both of our tears while he learned safety and security the hard way. I remembered the disgusting journey of training his body to absorb nutrients – even the sideline details like having to teach him how to chew and swallow without worrying that someone was going to take his food away from him in the process.

Our story of resiliency, redemption and grace comes with a lot of body parts and malfunctions. It’s been messy, and it often smells real bad.

Today’s river of pee actually made way for a tidal wave of gratitude from the deepest places in me.

Look at how far we’ve come.

He has a bed. He has a house, a room, Spiderman sheets. He can come out naked, find his mom, and laugh about his uncomfortable, inconvenient mess. He knows it’s going to be ok.

I couldn’t help but think this morning about how overwhelmingly thankful I am to have an entire half of a house that smells like pee and some soaking wet spidey sheets.

If this is the biggest manifestation of all of the transitions and hardships Lifa’s seven years have taken him through, then that puddle of pee is the greatest reason to celebrate I’ve ever seen! 

I don’t ever want to forget how far we’ve come. I don’t ever want to stop seeing the small victories along the way. Even when it looks like pee puddles.

Last week a woman sat in a churchyard and released her own buckets of body fluid. (I'm almost embarrassed that this is really a point of connection for me... please forgive my imagery and ridiculousness. I spend a lot of time with 7-year old boys.)

Tears streamed and soaked the bruised face of the mother who faithfully comes twice a week to cook for hundreds of children at our after-school program. She shared with a group of volunteers and staff at Ten Thousand Homes that she had been beaten all night in her one-room shack while her 11-year old son watched in horror.

Her night terrors are still alive and active.

Her long nights rage on.

There’s a long way to go before the celebrating starts.

But there are still puddles of proof that something is happening.

This weeping woman is the same mother who stayed locked in her own prison of shame for 8 years after her second-born son was stolen from her arms in the night. She never let a tear fall, and she told another person. She stayed strapped in the bondage of victimization and brokenness until just a few months ago.

I was there the day she opened up. My arms wrapped got to wrap around hers in the midst of that  miracle moment.

Today, my arms feel tied and  I’m wrestling with anger and disillusionment in the middle of this dark and lonely chapter in her life.

She did the right thing. She shared. She cried. She reached. 

But they won’t reach back.  Culturally, my reaching for her would only escalate the situation and create a more strained and dangerous environment for her and her child.

Why won’t the people and the church reach?

They don’t know there’s such a thing as a reach with open hands instead of closed fists. 

They don’t know a touch that doesn’t scandalize, steal or shatter. 

How can they reach if they’ve never been reached for? Where do we go from here? I still don’t know that answer.

So, on the same day I giggle over a new morning’s soaked Spiderman sheets, I cry for the lonely bruises in the darkest hour of the night. I am celebrating the puddles of proof on that little boy’s bed that there have been some hard years and some long nights.

A new morning has come and this new day’s problems only remind me of how far He’s brought us.

I have to remember that same truth for this mother and son also. Because there are puddles of progress and promise running down her face. That face was locked up like stone for years, and now it flows with tears that reach.

The dark nights aren’t over.

There will still be sheets to wash.

There will still be bruises to heal.

And when I don't know what to do, I’ll keep looking for proof that something is moving.

Someone is still making streams of grace that moves through the desert places.

The Kingdom came on a messy, dark night.

The Kingdom is coming on a bright new morning.

On that morning, Grace will no longer stream like messy puddles in the middle of a sullied story, but will reach with strong, scarred hands to wipe away those tears and to close the gap.

We celebrate sheets, and we celebrate the scars. But we don’t get used to them. We keep reaching, and we keep finding new puddles of grace to celebrate.

Hope Puberty

I moved to South Africa 5 years ago. FIVE YEARS.

An organization I’d never heard of said they wanted to be a part of building hope and home. And so did I. So I packed up life as I knew it, and I went to see what that looked like at Ten Thousand Homes.

To see what building hope looks like, you have to go to the places that need it.

For me, that looked like entering the yards, the shacks, and the hospital beds of the people whose eyes don’t sparkle and whose bodies betray them. (Yes, I did get in the hospital beds with them.) It’s looked like heaping plates for hungry bodies, baking cakes for the uncelebrated, praying and crying together through grief and loss, sitting in police stations with young girls reporting the unfathomable, dance parties on the playground, inviting them over for Sunday Lunch, holding up the arms and energy levels of the nurses providing constant care, testing for HIV and making plans, and modeling how to live like a family.

Hope for tomorrow can come in a million flavors, but you can’t taste it when you’re starving today.

For the past five years, building hope has looked a lot like digging the trenches. It’s really dirty and difficult. You go down instead of up. You just get knee-deep in mess.  Trust me… the backlash of trying to teach malnourished bodies to absorb nutrients is a lot messier than a shovel and dirt.

But after all that hard work, you get to build a foundation. There’s a place to start building something strong and that will last. 

Hope lasts. And makes everything looks different. It looks different than a dirt pile and different than a pile of bricks. 

And, pretty soon, it will look like a place to live.

When I enter the church yard for our after-school program today, armloads of sparkly eyes will pounce me; Ruth will hug me and pick me up so high I will wrap my legs around her waist; and we will get to work in the secure and beautiful routine we’ve established together.  When I drive through Dwaleni this morning, the babies whose bodies I carried to the hospital will be skipping and giggling to school in their new uniforms while their mom cleans their new house and applies for jobs.

I may have only influenced a Condor-load of people in Africa, but that little group isn’t starving or homeless anymore. Their bodies can absorb nutrients; their heads have a safe place to rest at night; and their hearts can hold hope.

So now it’s time to build it up.

 

(Look at my house today, y'all!)

Hope-building is changing. It’s growing up.

It’s becoming a place to abide instead of an emergency to respond to.

And as happy and holy as that might sound, I’m struggling.

When our bodies grow up, we have growing pains, awkward body changes, and, suddenly, you get BO. (Fine… I admit it… I’m freaking out that I just had to buy deodorant for 7-year old Lifa.)

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m going through awkward body changes, and Lifa stinks.

 

The application...

The verification...

THE MAN.

Those little distended bodies in the communities are being transformed into strong and thriving students. And now everything about how we work as a part of the Body of Christ is changing.

It’s like hope puberty.

We have a foundation, and we’re ready to build. We have bodies that can get up and dance.

We don’t need to change the dirty diapers of crisis and chaos anymore. We can teach them how to think and thrive and believe on their own. We can teach them how to build it too. That one Condor full of nourished bodies can start nourishing bodies.

Right now, instead of staying constantly covered in dirty children, ringworm, snot and tears (which happens to be my happy place), hope-building looks like planning meetings, vision-casting, research and education, program development, and things that involve not being continuously covered in whatever we find in the trenches.

And I need some hope deodorant or a hope training bra or something. The next stage of life is coming, and it involves higher capacity, higher influence and trusting God to transform the desires of my heart to the things He’s calling me into.

The Body is growing, increasing, and extending in beautiful ways. This is what it’s supposed to look like. She’s becoming a beautiful bride. I’m thrilled to be a part of it, and I’m humbled and honored that the Creator of the Universe cares enough to grow me up and let me get glimpses into a deeper love. I can’t imagine what it looks like – that day when we’re not building hope, but we’re dancing in the Father’s Home. He takes us step by step, stage by stage, and He transforms these awkward steps and stages into something beautiful.

Pray with me in this place of hope-growing and body-changing. 

Good things are coming. The Body is being made beautiful. 

And I’m just awkwardly trying to learn how to love in a new way.