I Dream of Dwaleni

In the past 3 weeks I’ve witnessed and absorbed far more trauma than I knew a mind and a heart could hold.

In fact, I don’t think I am holding it at all. I became saturated with sorrow, and then it just seeped out, leaving only the residue of shock in its wake.

And then I understood.

Pre-hope Lifa:  2 1/2 years ago.

I understand just a littttttle smidget of what it must be like…

…for death to be so common that there’s no time for tears and no language for mourning.

…for violence and crime to leave scars and holes that get plastered over with whatever trash is lying around.

…for your body to just stop registering hunger, much less a seemingly more trivial emotion.

…for children to suffer, to learn it’s not worth the tears, and to live in the hospital because there’s no one to pick them up.

I understood those flat faces that don’t move in joy or affliction. I understood why stories go untold and every day is treated like just another day to get through.

I can tell you first-hand that your mind, your heart and your body just can’t hold it all. So it stops.

You just flinch into survival mode – the safest place you can create in the dangerous world you live in. It shuts down the feelings that hurt too much. And wipes out the hope for today and tomorrow along with all the rest.

When it hurts too much to live, it hurts WAY too much to dream.

I visit often and I love deeply in Dwaleni, but I don’t live there.

I’m experiencing an all-system shut down when I have 4 wheels to drive me out of the pain.

The ladies of Sizanani Home-Based Care live there.

In hungry houses and in houses made of sticks.

Photo by Carly B

These women see tragedy after tragedy… and respond. On the days when they are hungry and it’s blazing hot, these volunteers still walk up mountains of crumbly rock with medicine, compassion, and prayers for the sick, they dying and the most vulnerable in their own community. They don’t get paid. But they don’t stop going.

January has taken a toll on us.

I’ve watched hope drain out of these women in the heat of South Africa’s summer. They’ve been without for so long that they can’t remember what it is like to dream, not even enough to remember why they keep doing what they do everyday.

The feeding program in Dwaleni is growing by leaps and bounds. Hundreds… Hundreds of children feel the hope-drain in their own homes, pervasive hopelessness in their community, and run into our yard to escape it. They’re starving in so many ways. It feels like chaos.

I felt us all circling the drain in January.

And everybody at Ten Thousand Homes was talking about dreams, vision, hope and all that other Kingdom-Coming, New-Year jibber-jabber.

See what I mean…

See how I just hyphenated Kingdom-Coming and called it jibber-jabber?

That’s a drain-circling red flag right there.

My leaders were asking me what I wanted for Dwaleni. And I just wanted us all to survive it. The Sizanani ladies, the children, the families, the feedings.

I was circling a drain in a tiny sink of today’s circumstances…. When my Maker poured the depths of the ocean at His word, just because He dreamt it. And He made me in the creating, dreaming, purpose-filled image of Himself… as well as the Sizanani ladies, and the children, the families and the feedings.

The Sizanani ladies and I had to get out of that sink before January came to an end. You can’t dive in to a kiddie pool, and God said it is a year to go deep with Him.

Last Wednesday, I went to teatime. I was armed with cake, paint and with a dream to start dreaming. (How can that not go well?)

I told the ladies I was stuck. I couldn’t do today or tomorrow. And I was tired. Leaning forward, they agreed with wide eyes… eyes that felt understood.

We talked about His Kingdom coming in a way that wasn’t hyphenated jibber-jabber at all – in the way that is filled with promises for tomorrow and hope for today. His Kingdom has come and it is coming. There are still tears to be wiped and stomachs to be fed, but we have the authority and the Spirit of His Kingdom within us.

And that feeding program was designed to look like Home. The Kingdom kind of Home… the one where we are safe, where we dive, and where we belong. Not the ones they run away from and replicate in our yard with clenched fists.

I asked the women who cook, clean and pour out their lives for the orphaned and vulnerable children in their own communities to dream for the feeding program and to dream about what God sees when He looks at Dwaleni. I asked them to paint a picture of what God sees when He sees Dwaleni. No words necessary, but God’s heartbeat for the place their hearts beat.

We prayed, and they painted.

This would be the part where I show a picture of some amazing glowy, sparkly, Picasso-shaming painting…

I THOUGHT we were going there.

We sooort of went there.

They painted words.

For these ladies, the biggest dream they could stretch themselves to believe for was for the holes in the roof to be repaired.

And that is a BIG stretch from surviving the day – that is at least leaning toward something being better tomorrow than it is today.

We talked more. Once I started remembering His Promises and started asking Him to show us what He wants Dwaleni to look like, I started getting amped up.

More kids are coming. We have to have more food. Felicia said, “But we can’t make more food because we don’t have big enough tubs for the food.”

I replied with eyes tinted with hope, “What a great problem! We’re going to get bigger buckets. Bigger buckets mean bigger dreaming!”

Then desires started flooding in:

We need more serving spoons. And a bigger pot.

The house is cracking.

Maaaybe the fighting could stop and we could teach them the Bible.

What if the chaos stopped outside the fence, and there was the peace of the Kingdom reigning over that Thursday afternoon after-school stop?

Photo by Carly B

It’s not Picasso.

It’s not the images or the colors of happily ever after…yet.

But we got bigger buckets.

And, the next day, not only was there enough food, but there was a LINE for SECONDS!

And we’re going to keep dreaming. Big-bucket dreams.

And today, right here and right now with you, I’m going to start believing for ocean-sized buckets. Because He is faithful. He fulfills promises, parts oceans, and overflows buckets of hope.

Photo by Carly B

Photo by Carly B

He’s coming.

He’s here.

Hope, fill our buckets.

(My style of passing our juice)

Saturday's Swirls

Saturdays are set apart.

It’s the one day of the week that I make sure to reserve for rest and for recharging with my Savior. Without a spiritual and physical refill on Saturdays, the sights and sounds of the week dry me up waaaaay too quickly, and I’m just plain useless.

Usually I’m outside – on a hike, finding a new waterfall, on a safari or some other grand adventure this glorious country has to offer. But today was a rainy Saturday.

I found caffeine and a patio protected from the unstopping rain. (It’s been going for over 12 hours!) And I cried out to be awakened by so much more than the latte.

I’ve seen and felt stories in the past few weeks that people just shouldn’t see – that children just shouldn’t live. I feel like I’ve internalized so much pain that I couldn’t stop the bleed, so I finally lost consciousness. I stopped being able to feel it.

Today I needed to feel the One who actually came to feel that pain and carry it  - for them and for me so we don’t have to.

As I sat and sipped, I began reading and praying.  I felt the far-off pull on my spirit – that gentle, tingly plea from His Spirit longing for access to wrap me in Truth and love.

But I was clogged. So I just got in the car.

And I was compelled on this rainy afternoon to break all the rules I set myself for Saturdays. On this Saturday, the day set aside for turning my face away from trauma to see beauty and find hope, I couldn’t stop driving to the children’s ward of the hospital.

So I climbed the slippery steps on this rainy Sabbath Saturday, I kicked off my shoes, and I jumped up onto 6 year-old Chantelle’s bed.

And I felt good.

I pulled out a sketchpad and a 24-pack of Crayola colored pencils. And she lit up. And instantly went to work.

When Given woke up, we piled into Chantelle’s bed together. Given started swirling colors on top of the psalms and prayers in my journal.

And it was good.

Inspiration was flowing out of bodies burned beyond imagination. And those children, with scars they’ll wear forever, were making beautiful art that I’ll never forget.

I stayed for hours.

I fed kids who needed help.

And helped them go to the toilet.

I gave forehead kisses.

I rubbed backs.

I rocked babies.

I didn’t go in there with my missionary cape on.

I hardly even prayed.

But I felt rest in that hospital full of broken, hurting baby bodies.

And I began to wonder if I was so compelled to go there because that was a place where the need for comfort, help and healing was so obvious and so necessary. And I couldn’t find that place in me.

In that hospital ward today, a few colored pencils brought glory and hope and delight. A hand on a back and a kiss on a forehead actually did make things better for a moment. And the smiles behind those scars were the only things I noticed.

Jesus, Burden-Bearer, Scar-Wearer,

I need a reason to sing – a song that sings louder than missing-child voicemails and wait-till-next-year phone calls. I need that peace that reaches hospitals, crushes lies and can resurrect the parts of me that feel dead. It’s in there – in me. Because you went to every hospital ward, you lay in every bed, you cried every tear, you received every kind of phone call and lived out the reality of them more than I ever will. You were more than burned, more than alone. You gave, obeyed, followed, abandoned and stood firm more. And then You promised more. You are more. More dwells in me.

Will you open up these closed parts? Can you receive this clamped and cramping, closed-down heart as an offering… and can you make it holy?

Can you make this beautiful?

Amen

It’s still Saturday.

It’s still the day for seeing beauty and finding hope.

It’s still raining and the stories are still happening.

But tonight I’m remembering that rest doesn’t come in a formula or wrapped in a pretty Sabbath bow. Rest comes with real people in real places in real daily life. Rest comes with sharing burdens on hospital beds. And sharing journal pages for color swirls.

And it’s good.

Goggle Vision

The year started at the bottom of the world, watching in wonder in the very place where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans collide. The splash on the surface was nothing compared to the currents dancing down deep. But I could only imagine that part – I couldn’t reach it, measure it, or ever know it.

Cape of Good Hope - Photo by Carly B 

Then I climbed over boulders, took off my sandals, and wiggled my way up close to the Creator’s tides. I put on goggles, paused my lungs and plunged my body below.

It was alive down there!

A whole other realm – living, breathing, beauty unfathomable in the exact places that looked like a dark and scary abyss from above. I couldn’t breathe down there, but there was life. 

Beautiful, better-than-I-could-imagine life.

Life that made me giggle and glow.

Life that enamored me with childlike mystery.

Life I didn’t need to understand or have any kind of control over.

Life that God didn’t have to make in neon colors and that He didn’t have to texturize with His own thumbprints.

The year started with goggles on and with a psalm about the Deep.

Here’s part of my New Year psalm, inspired by Life under the surface and in those places I can’t breathe.

Stories and hardships swirl, but your tide comes in every morning.

Your deep-song comes in for my deepest cries.

And it washes. And it cleans. And it makes new.

The stories aren’t lost out there. They won’t drown.  We won’t be swept away.

Oceans are touching seamlessly, creating beauty in the collision of their currents.

What does it look like when you touch me? And when heaven touches earth?

It might not be a beautiful collision, but it’s my air. I need you and that touch and that current-crash.

Because I could get lost in stories swirling and lunging at promises, but You won’t let me.

Take this life, and make it holy.

Make it a banner for the deep.

For the justice in the Deep.

For the hope in the Deep.

For seeing with new eyes – for things existing in the Deep that can’t exist outside of it.

The promises are like the things in the deep.

2013 is like the things in the deep.

I can’t breathe in there. But I breathe You.

I scribbled that psalm with an ocean view. With goggle-vision.

I came back chanting and cheering for goggle-vision in 2013, for diving to the depths and seeing with Justice-vision, Glory-vision, in the new year. I came back restored, refreshed and ready to go with God where God said to go.

I came back in the high tide of reality – where new beginnings start in recovery mode from the devastation December leaves behind in rural South Africa.  

I wasn’t alone, and I am thankful for that. Because it’s not easy to switch from January 1st goggle-vision to actually going to the places of the Deep for the other 364 days.

Given - Photo by Carly B

We came back to a hospital ward full of wailing babies with unchanged bandages. Tears filled eyes that didn’t deem them worthy of falling. Apathy proliferating and hopelessness permeating.

We drove through a dark community after leaving screaming hospital babies. We found Nandi hiding, dirty, weeping and refusing to go home. And her mother walking away, unmoved by the display.

We spent a late night with that 11-year old in a police station, listening to police tell us Nandi’s just “mentally off”, trying to convince me to take her off their hands, to drop her off at the hospital for the next speed bump in the system.

We spent an early morning at social services, fighting for justice with placating smiles on our faces while the 11-year old child of the streets clung to my knees and sucked her thumb.

Charity - Photo by Carly B

We went to the first day of school with some of our most precious little ones, speaking about hope for tomorrow - and for some sort of surrogate celebration for Lifa’s first day of school four hours away.

We hugged Neli for making it back to school, and she told us her dream come true was slightly tinged with worry because her 3-year old sister was locked in her house with no childcare.

And that was all within 12 hours.

In those 12 hours, I forgot the words and the rhythm of the psalm. Even as I reread it now, I can’t remember what it felt like to write with the ocean-song in the background. The goggles are stored out of reach, and goggle-vision feels further than that.

I feel bags under my eyes, dirt under my fingernails, bug bites everywhere, and a deep, deep hurt for hospital babies, social services babies, and one little baby boy who didn’t start school at my house.

It hurts so deep I can’t really feel it.

But I think I’ve written something before about a Deep I couldn’t reach or know.

Eleven days into the new year, and I’m having trouble breathing.

The promises are like the things in the deep.

2013 is like the things in the deep.

I can’t breathe in there. But I breathe You.

HE promised.

“See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:19

I can’t breathe in the middle of the circumstances surrounding me.

But maybe, maaaayyybeeee, I can remember how to climb over those boulders, take off my sandals, wiggle up close to my Creator.

In 2013, can I exchange these eyes on the world for the eyes that see the Deep? Can I pause the lungs that grasp to get it, and can I plunge my heart, soul, hands and feet into the Deep and let Him get it?

Not by myself.

Photo by Carly B's arm

Carly B did it with me this week. And I choked and stuttered and gasped for air.

But, together, we remember the giggling, glowing, enamoring Life under the deep – the place we couldn’t understand or control. The place we could only see and be amazed.

I don’t know what this year is going to look like, but I think we’re going to deeper places. And I’m asking you to come – to at least believe with me that there is living, breathing, beauty unfathomable in the places that look like a dark and scary abyss.

Can we do this together?

And believe there’s abundant life when we plunge into the places where it feels like we can’t breathe…

Tommy and Goggles - Photo by Carly B

Just a taste...

Happy New Year!

We're starting 2013 with a boom at Ten Thousand Homes! As soon as the year kicks into gear, so do we, and we open our doors to lots and lots and lots of visitors. I'm looking forward to a year of embracing new arms that are reaching out for the orphaned and vulnerable children.

We definitely need the new year prayers that almost everybody needs as we welcome January... prayers to keep His pace, find His rest, and live according to His plans amongst the busyness and excitement winding up.

JUST before the season changes from holidays and rest to getting our hands dirty in the hard-to-hold circumstances of life here, I want to remember with you. I want to remember what His rest, His provision, and His delight tastes like. Because it is so good.

Just a few December summer pics to with you a Happy 2013!
I pray that we can all remember to...

"Taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!"
Psalm 34:8

Full-contact Christmas

The fa-la-la-la-la and Christmas magic are being put back into attics, sealed up for another 11-month sleep as a new year is unwrapping. There’s so much coming in this new year. I believe 2013 is a game-changer in the Kingdom of God. But before the stroke of midnight, and hopefully a thousand times after, I want to unwrap and to reopen, Christmas magic.

After three years, this was my first Christmas morning with Lifa. He’s never had a “Christmas morning” the way that I know Christmas morning… there have never been gifts, music, special breakfasts, a tree, or a manger story. He didn’t even know he was supposed to wake up at 5am and pounce with glee. So I did. :) 

But first, I prayed.

I needed Christmas morning to be more than wrapping paper and cinnamon rolls. Because the next day I’d drop Lifa off for an unforeseeable amount of time at his dad’s house, four hours from mine. This time is different than any of the others. And because I knew that after we played and celebrated, we’d being going to the hospital for a Christmas visit.

Two days before Christmas, I got an early morning phone call from the most broken mama-voice I’ve ever heard. Sweet Given had been burned. A plastic bag, burning in a trash pile, had found that perfect 3-year old body in the early hours of the morning. Given is ok – but has severe surface burns beginning at the left-hand fingertips and climbing up the arm. There are also some ear burns and blisters around Given’s head and face.

That day I realized that the children’s ward would be full of broken and burned babies on Christmas morning. And that Christmas magic had to reach them there - and had to be even more than Christmas morning tradition.

It had to be what Christmas really is. The “magic” that is actually mysterious holiness needed to be actually mysteriously holy.

Vulnerable, unconditional love came in to the most unexpected circumstances and brought joy. Everlasting life meets daily life, on hospital beds, in trash piles, on the road between Lifa’s dad’s house and mine, and in the donkey’s bed (Lifa’s rendition of the manger).

Love put on a real body and entered daily life through a real body.

Love broke through oppression, sickness and filth by coming into those very things on His own birth day.

But you know what? I bet there was joyful laughing on the day that Savior-baby was cast into the filth of a manger. I can almost hear the wild thanksgiving after that final scream of pain.

It was a full-contact Christmas on that manger day.

He came with a body, through a body.

He came to earth all the way to reach us all the way. In the middle of scandal, chaos, rejection, vulnerability, fear, a Savior is born. And that Savior hasn’t left.

Full-contact Christmas.

He reaches it all.

And I need that Christmas to keep going all year.

Because that Christmas can reach burned bodies, broken mothers, and faraway families.

And that Christmas can reach me. My skin and my depths. My heart and my soul. The parts that cry for my babies and the parts I can’t even reach. Christmas can reach.

Christmas isn’t for the attic.

That full-contact Christmas reaches and is eternal. It’s reaching every hospital ward, every broken heart, and every injustice.

I prayed on Christmas morning for that morning of new traditions and play with Lifa to be my frankincense and myrrh. And now on this New Year’s Eve morning, I pray to live like full-contact Christmas lives  - and that my words, my thoughts, my actions and my faith be my frankincense and myrrh all year long. 

Our Christmas morning...

Lifa telling the Christmas story

Pure bliss every time he opened a gift... "IT'S A BOXXXX!!!"

Our Christmas visit to hospital...

George loved Jesus' birthday cake

And Khensani loved the balloons and stickers!

And Given started smiling again on Christmas Day

pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

Christmas is so close we can taste it! Christmas music is blasting everywhere - I HAD to laugh when I heard Feliz Navidad blaring in a South African pharmacy!

I had a moment a few weeks ago that made me rethink one Christmas song in particular.

It was a typical Sunday morning: I was hauling the giant red Condor through Dwaleni to pick up the kids and the mamas for church. Nandi pounced me in delight, her eyes and her mouth shouting, “Mama Kacy! Mama Kacy! Christmas! YOU!”

She handed me a tiny little piece of wrapping paper covered in Christmas stickers. I knew this was the very finest she had to offer. And I gave thanks.

I opened up the palm-sized parcel to find a neatly folded piece of notebook paper with her handwriting.

To my surprise, the paper was covered with the words – the English words – to the song The Little Drummer Boy. I giggled and started singing it. Nandi had never even heard the song, but ran in her house to show me that she had a book from school with the words written down… right next to the picture of a dark brown baby in a manger wearing traditional Swazi dress. (So awesome.)

As we loaded up the car with bouncing children, I skimmed through my iPod and found a hilarious – or maybe embarrassing – Christmas surprise. I did have The Little Drummer Boy… sung by New Kids on the Block. (Busted.)

It was better than a reunion concert… we JAMMED New Kids on the Block that Sunday morning.  Over and over again we sang, “Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum”.

I was in Christmas bliss in that moment, as we drove up a mountain sprinkled with shacks, barefoot and unsupervised babies, and empty-handed people. I reveled in the Truth and worshipped with a band of 10 kids playing the dashboard, headrest, and hand drums.

And I sang the words of Truth loud…

Come, they told me... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

A new born King to see... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

Our finest gifts we bring... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

To lay before the King... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

Rum pum pum pum, Rum pum pum pum.

So, to honor Him...Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

When we come.

Little baby... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

I am a poor boy too... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

I have no gifts to bring... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

That's fit to give our King... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

Rum-pum-pum-pum, Rum-pum-pum-pum.

Shall I play for you... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

On my drum.

Mary nodded... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

The ox and lamb kept time... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

I played my drum for Him... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

I played my best for Him... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,

Rum-pum-pum-pum, Rum-pum-pum-pum.

Then He smiled at me... Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.

Me and my drum. 

This carload of kids had nothing to bring their King that Sunday morning, but they were singing to Him. They were playing their drums. And I was playing them too – on the steering wheel. They offered songs and joy in a language they couldn't even understand, and I offered that steering wheel, that Sunday morning, and my hands.

And it was Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you and your family. I pray that every hand that passes a gift, serves a plate of food, hugs a family member, or opens the door for a guest is blessed with all of the meaning in that “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum,” and He opens your Christmas morning ears to hear the cadence of the King’s song. 

A Bucket of Justice

I’ve just spent three glorious days at the beach.  

And not just any 3 days at the beach: Family Vacation!

I’m so thankful.

I wrote this on our last night at the ocean:

Today, an almost-5 year old hand grabbed mine and led me to just the right spot – that magical place where the waves meet the shore, where the depths come in for a kiss.

He threw sand, and I marveled at what a perfect Christmas moment it actually was. Not a miracle baby and a star, but the Creator coming in for us, nonetheless.

Lifa sat in my lap, and waves rolled over our feet with giggles and gladness.

I sang.

“Your love, Oh Lord, reaches to the heavens.

Your faithfulness stretches to the skies.

Your righteousness is like a mighty mountain.

Your justice flows like the ocean’s tides.”

I watched the ocean coming and coming, and I thought about justice that looks like that.

What is justice that flows like that?

The child on my lap is starting Grade R (kindergarten) in January, but has no documentation. He might be able to be enrolled, but it won’t “count”. He can’t get a diploma, health care, a passport, a driver’s license, a job, a bank account, etc.

But the ocean keeps coming.

I never know where the waves are going to land, which ones will fill up our bucket, or which ones will bury our feet. But I know they’re still going to come.

January changes everything for me.

Unless the tides change, Lifa will go to attend a community school near his dad’s house – four hours away from mine. He may only be with me for school holidays.

I swallow this reality with salt and sand, and he squeals with a purity and joy I’ve never ever seen before as he faces the “big swimming pool”. He’s screaming and squeezing – and I sing.

“Your justice flows like the ocean’s tides.”

I hold that baby tight.  And I look for the edges of the ocean.

But I can’t find them.  So I let go. And I raise up my hands.

And I look at Justice lapping around our legs, swallowing us, even picking us up and spinning us around as its tide comes in. 

I look at Justice, and I tell Him there’s enough out there.

I tell Him I don’t want a swimming pool.

I want tides of Justice flowing in, over me and over us.

There’s enough out there for January, no matter where his feet land and where mine do.

It’s time for sand castles. I promised I’d help.

We need water, but he’s too scared to go out deep enough to let the bucket fill up.

So I take that green plastic sand pail, and I walk into the ocean.

I fill up, and I bring Lifa one bucket of Justice at a time.

And I tell Justice how happy I am to bring that bucket to Lifa.

And I realize that there’s enough – and that it’s completely worth it.

Justice is flowing. Justice is complete. Justice is rolling in.

Lifa needs justice. He was made in the image of Justice. Thousands of names I don’t know need justice.

And when they are too scared, too small or just in shell-shock, I can take a bucket and cross that sand for them.

I can bring one bucket of His unending supply at a time, and give Lifa the tool he needs to keep dreaming and keep digging into the house he’s building us and the hope he’s learning how to live with.

I don’t know what 2013 will look like or feel like. I don’t know how easy it will be to swallow once I’ve washed the sand and salt out.

But I know, and I’ll sing:

“Your love, Oh Lord, reaches to the heavens.

Your faithfulness stretches to the skies.

Your righteousness is like a mighty mountain.

Your justice flows like the ocean’s tides.”

Justice says He’s finished. He’s sitting in the mercy seat. I’ll sit at His shores.

He said He’d build a big house in 2013 for me, and for His Family. He said He has plans for that house and His Family that I can’t begin to grasp.

He said He loves me and Lifa and Lifa’s father. And that He doesn’t even have to readjust Himself on the mercy seat for His highest good, the greatest love, to flow in like the oceans tides.

I can’t fathom any of it.

And I can’t see the edges of the ocean.

But I have a bucket.