Journey to Legacy House- part 1

Feb 25^th 2013

Brandon Hatmaker: “Here’s the deal. We want you”
Me: “Seriously!??!?!?” (Professional response, I know)

 Rewind to October 2012:

 I just returned from spending 4 months in Uganda. I resigned from my position as a Treatment Counselor in a Psychiatric Residential Facility where I had been working just shy of 5 yrs to be able spend those 4 months in Uganda. The whole process had God’s fingerprints all over it and so obviously everything was going to fall into place when I returned…..

So not the case (it did, but just not in MY timing). One month went by, then another. No job. No clear direction. Confused. Begging God for some answers.

 It was such a battle of trying to figure out how all the pieces of the puzzle were going to fit together. I love Uganda. I had been going for the past three years and then spending 4 months there was incredible. So much of my heart was there. BUT….I loved being home too. I have such a strong desire and passion to work for the hurting here in America.

 “Wait a sec! Nashville! That’s where I am supposed to be!” This is where Exile International is based and I wanted to be close to the team to still be involved, yet get a full time counseling job. I had a few interviews, one was very promising and she was going to start calling my references. I kind of panicked and realized I was moving ahead in this and I had no peace from God to move forward. I called and told her that I just couldn’t make the move to Nashville.

 God and I had a few more conversations. I wondered if I should truly step out and fundraise full time to work in Uganda with Exile. Again, such an unsettling feeling with no clear “yes, go in this direction” from God.

 He was constantly reigning me in. Holding me back. Making me stay right where I was in my cozy little condo in Cedar Rapids, IA. I was not too happy about this.

 “God, you know I don’t belong here in IA” (insert giggles from God)

 “I want something so much bigger. I know you know this! I know you understand my desire and passion to be a part of change and movement! God, if I am not supposed to be in Uganda, please let me have a job that I am just as passionate about….the things YOU are passionate about…bring it Lord”

 Just wait, Kari

 “What am I waiting for?!?!”

 

November, December, January--- no job. I am filling in as a secretary (first impression specialist) at my Dad’s company. And if any of you know me, I’m sure you realize how absolutely miserable I was. Nothing against my dad’s company, but sitting at a desk and answering phones all day???? Oh I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

 

Then, I FINALLY get a job offer to be a Functional Family Therapist.

 Is this what God was having me wait for?

 I put on a fake smile, accepted and succumbed that this was just temporary. Surely, God still had something else up His sleeve. I even remember my facebook post that I wrote after I accepted this job, stating that I was confident that even though I am still in Cedar Rapids, IA taking this new job, that God was still going to reveal His ultimate plan.

 Don’t get me wrong, it was wonderful to be able to be fully trained and to practice a whole new level of therapeutic intervention with families. But it still didn’t feel right. I still felt stuck.

 It is now the end of January. I just returned from attending a new training for my job in Connecticut. I am home in my condo and skimming through my newsfeed on Facebook.

 Jen Hatmaker (I wish I could remember what friend of mine posted something of Jen’s about a yr ago that led me to “like” her page. If I could remember, you would get a big fat hug and thank you!) just recently posted about a position pertaining to this new program called, Legacy House, with a link to Brandon’s Blog.

 I went to check it out. With every sentence that I was reading, my heart was pounding just a little bit harder. I found myself agreeing to everything I was reading. My passion was increasing and I was remembering all the faces of girls that I had worked with in the past in the residential facility. Girls in the foster care system, some that were not, but completely broken, no hope, no safety net, no encouragement; stuck with families or shelters that continued to break them down.

 I love them. So much. I never thought that I would work in residential for as long as I did. It was brutal at times. Kicked, spit on, hair pulled so hard my scalp would bleed, skin torn apart from being bit, scars due to their nails being dug in my skin. It took about a year to develop some thick skin to deal with all of it. But when you can learn to see more than their behaviors, more than their pain that is speaking…..then you can truly see their worth and what they are capable of.

 Brandon wrote about their desire to have a Resident Director come to Austin, TX to live in the home with 4 girls at a time that were transitioning out of foster care. I walked away from my computer, not sure what to do with it all!

 A couple hours had passed. I knew it was my passion, but the timing just seemed terribly off. I JUST started a new job!

 “God, I have no idea if this is at all what you have been telling me to wait for, but I’m just going to submit my info. That’s it. There are thousands of people seeing this post. Nothing is going to come of it, but thanks for letting me read about this!”

 Ha! I bet God was just having a blast with all of this. I submitted my info and then went on my merry way honestly thinking I was never going to hear anything, truly!

 Jan 31^st I receive an email from Brandon stating that I was put in the top 5 and he would like to chat.

 I was shocked, totally taken back. Initially, I had no idea what to think. I honestly never thought I was going to hear anything and so I really never thought seriously about the whole thing! Could I really do this? Is this truly why God has been telling me to wait? Is Austin, TX where I am supposed to be??

 I fervently began seeking God about all of this. For the first time since returning from Uganda in October I felt the path open up before me and God telling me “yes, go….this is where I want you to walk.”

 We chatted and then I flew out to Austin for an interview….completely terrified! I don’t think I had ever been more nervous in my life. I contemplated some wise advice that was given to go take a shot before the interview to calm my nerves, but settled that starbucks might be better.

 I had a week to wait until I was going to hear back. I kid you not, EVERY DAY something happened that pointed to Austin. I would open a book and the first sentence would be about Austin, TX. My mom called and said she was reading the local paper and Austin, TX was listed as one of the top places to visit. I was flying home after training from CT and the girls sitting next to me were from Austin. I was convinced that either God was playin’ me or that He was continuing to affirm that this was His plan.

Feb 25^th 2013

Brandon: “Here’s the deal, we want you”

 March 15^th 2012

I packed up my condo, brought my necessary belongings and hit the road for Austin, TX!

 

Man's Idea or God's Idea?

Hindsight is 20/20, right? I love when I can look back at various processes and be able to so clearly see exactly what God was up to! Sometimes we have no clue until years down the road, and other times it smacks you in the face. There is so much about this journey that I am on right now that helps me make sense of certain events in the past and present. It is absolutely wild! I love how God does this…and the more we say “yes” the wilder the ride!

I love good stories. And to have good stories it most often involves some crazy drama, humor, mistakes, out of the box ideas, risk-taking, etc. My good friend Kari Gibson (www.mycrazyadoption.com, check her out!) will tell you that on every trip we take, whether it’s to Uganda, Ethiopia or Haiti…I always pray for crazy drama so that I can have a good story to tell. Most don’t like that I do that J And if I remember correctly, right after I was telling Kari G this while standing in the security line headed to Uganda, she realized that she couldn’t get through security because she was given the wrong ticket. I do believe I was shortly sent a text message with a swear word in it blaming me as she was running around the airport (sorry to “out” you , sinner) J  

God has a pretty good (actually perfect) track record of catching me, leading me and guiding me. You might want to try Him out in this area if you haven’t yet J I so want to take the time one of these days and list out every possible way that He has proved himself faithful and loving and had me wait so he could give me the absolute best.  I didn’t always believe this about God. In fact, I had so much shame in my life that I couldn’t even fathom that this all-powerful, majestic, mighty God would actually want to lower himself to meet me, cradle me, wipe my tears, sing over me and lead me to the pastures of such an overwhelming, magnitude of grace.  I couldn’t make sense of who He was and what my role as His daughter looked like. I had this deep, unsettling feeling that for me to love Jesus that I had to completely change everything about me.

  Me- adventure seeker, adrenaline junkie, risk-taker.

 Is my life going to succumb to being a just a bible study leader?

Do I just need to nail down how to have my hour quiet time in the morning?

How many girls do I need to disciple?

 This was all that was being modeled around me. Please, I get that this is all good, but there is SO MUCH MORE! I felt like I was stuffing so much of who God created me to be to fit into this so called Christian box. I hated it. I fought it. I experienced leaders in Christian ministry judge and hurt others. Where was the love? Where was the freedom?  I continued to question over and over again, “God, there has to be so much more.”

Africa 2010. This trip awakened my heart and made me feel more alive than I had ever felt before. Passion, desire and anger engulfed me as I witnessed the events around me. I began to feel the heart of God and what He truly desires of all of us. LOVE. He wants us to LOVE. To sit with the broken, wash the feet of a prostitute, giggle with an orphan, comfort the widow….to be His hands and feet. God showed me that who I was, was O.K. Who I was, was enough to be used. That my intense passion, strong-willed, adrenaline seeking self was everything that He wanted to use to bring others to himself. He wanted me to throw the rules out the window and to run with abandonment. ….every single part of me that He knitted and wove together.

 God didn’t want me to fit in some man-made idea that others had constructed and influenced regarding what it meant to live for Him. Man is full of error, God is perfect. And let me tell you. When you can get to this place, the amount of freedom that washes over you is so immense!

I was on the phone with Kari G a few days leading up to the most recent trip we took to Ethiopia/Uganda this past summer. Some events from my past had surfaced and I found myself in a place of despair and pain.  I was shaken, confused, and I thought I had moved on and dealt with all of this years ago. I was about take the biggest risk of my life with just recently quitting my job to spend 4 months with exile international in northern Uganda working with former child soldiers. So obviously, there was some spiritual attack going on as well.

7 years ago I was supposed to go on my first trip to Africa. The same thoughts that I was openly sharing with Kari were the ones that I shared 7 years ago and was told that I could not go to Africa. My thoughts were apparently too sinful and apparently no one else ever struggled in ways of thinking.  The words out of Kari’s mouth were the exact words that I know God wanted me to hear. You see, Kari didn’t know that what I was sharing with her was what got me “kicked off” the Africa trip years ago. Her response: “Kari, there is NOTHING that you can say right now that would ever make me question having you come on this trip. NEVER think that you can’t be used by God because of something you are walking through.  I want you to be on this team even MORE because of this place you are in.”

 THAT is LOVE. That is JESUS.

My favorite stories have God’s fingerprints all over them. You know the ones. Where you can’t make sense of anything, or explain why…it’s just God doing His thing. Now those are my favorite ones to tell….and more of that in my next post: Journey to the Legacy House.

My challenge to you: Are you running after and serving God through a man-constructed idea, or God’s idea?

 

 

 

 

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week--My Story

It all started on 1/16/07. I walked into Eating Disorder Center of Denver helpless, hopeless and in a state of severe depression. I truly wanted help, but was completely terrified to give up all my control and to receive the healing that I needed.

You see, it had been a very long road up until this point. I am not going to get into the depths of the “why’s” and “how’s” of how this all developed. But will give you a glimpse of what my greatest heart’s desire was which led me down this very destructive path. What you find with most individuals that have had an eating disorder, is that it starts out meeting one need and as the addiction intensifies it begins to take on a whole new level of meaning, ultimately taking over your entire life.

I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be heard. This is a very common desire for most of us, but mine runs so very deep. I didn’t know how to communicate that in words and what started out as a very innocent way of controlling my looks turned into a vicious never-ending cycle of addiction. It started as a way of managing fear and then turned into meeting all my needs (so I thought) in my life. I had control; oh I had so much control! When things around me were spiraling down, at least I had control of my body. If I wanted to feel empty inside, I could make that happen. If I wanted to feel full, I could make that happen. I know you always hear that it’s not about the food….it really isn’t.

By the time I had entered treatment, I was going on 5 years of being in an entangled, terrorizing relationship with my eating disorder. The weeks leading up to treatment were by far the worst. I just stopped going to work because I couldn’t get out of bed. I stopped all contact with friends. I was very suicidal (and was mad at myself because I didn’t have the guts to end my life) and began cutting to release all the emotional intensity on the inside (and of course it was a cry for help). 5 years of weight loss pills (led to racing heart), laxative abuse (many years of GI problems), over-exercising, binging, purging, restricting….over and over and over again. I was what they would call “EDNOS, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified”. I was all over the map and bouncing back and forth between bulimia and anorexia.

I remember entering treatment and being so upset with myself. I was not at my goal weight and I was set on getting there and THEN going to get help. Do you want to know what I thought success looked like? A hospital bed. Yup, I thought that if I could get sick enough to get in a hospital bed then that would be enough (Oh sweet Jesus thank you for saving me). I highly doubt that if I would have made it to a hospital bed that I would have felt satisfied. That’s the thing with this addiction and any addiction…..it’s never enough. Once you meet your first goal weight, then you come up with another goal weight!

I had to come face to face with my eating disorder while in treatment, and let me tell you, it was not PRETTY!! I fought hard! Oh I was hanging on to dear life to what I thought defined me. I yelled, I slammed doors, I walked out of treatment….I look back now and I can’t even recognize who that was. Can you blame me though? I have such a deep understanding of addiction ever since walking this journey. It was my life, my savior, my friend, my confident….I needed something else to come in and replace it, I couldn’t just remove it.

Things began shifting for me when I met Celeste. She was in her 40’s though she looked so much older due to many, many years enslaved to her eating disorder. She just came from the hospital when she entered the treatment facility. She had to walk with a cane because she was so weak and her bones were so brittle. I was jealous when I first saw her. She did it. She got there. But then, I started to listen to her during our process group. As she painted the picture of what it was like in the hospital, for the first time something clicked inside of me. I used to glamorize the picture of making it to the hospital bed. When Celeste spoke about it, everything changed. A veil was literally lifted from my eyes and I began to see the reality of it all. Do I really want to die from this? There has to be more for my life! I want more for my life!

Celeste and I kept in contact after I discharged, and a few months later when she left she passed away from her eating disorder. I was devastated and completely heart-broken that her eating disorder won. The same story has repeated itself with many others that I knew in treatment, most ending their life in suicide.

This will be a book if I go into what recovery looked like for me, but what I will say was that it was a long road. There were set-backs and relapses and all out fights on the floor with me shaking my fists at God not thinking that I could do this. But you know what? I did. God came in and rescued me in a million different ways….someday I will share all of those, but while I was in treatment I found God for the first time. For the first time in my life I chose God for myself, not for someone else. I decided that who I was, who God created me to be, was enough. Please hear me when I say all this. I am not saying that everything was great after this realization or that I just “prayed it away”….oh it was work. It was a constant daily battle to allow God into the depths of my heart, places that I kept hidden, ashamed of, to let Him heal.

It’s hard to completely and radically change your ways. I was ambivalent about getting better for a very long time after I left treatment. I straddled the recovery line so to speak for a couple years after. It wasn’t until I started truly taking those steps forward that I began to realize that it would be MORE work to STAY sick. Passions were forming, desires were coming to life, and purpose had a feeling. And that was worth more to me than my eating disorder.

My trip to Africa in 2010 was the final straw in my recovery. I look back on that trip and see that it brought freedom to a whole new level. Honestly, I don’t even have words for it, but something happened deep within me. My eyes were opened to what true beauty looked like in the face of the suffering.

Discharge day in treatment was called “Samina”. It comes from the Arabic word meaning “healthy”. On my Samina day I shared some reflections of my journey. There was a song that I listened to almost every day, “beauty from pain” by Superchick. Here is the chorus---

“After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I’ve cried my last, there will be beauty from pain.

Though it won’t be today, someday I will hope again,

And there will be, Beauty from Pain”

Friends, there is most definitely beauty from pain. There is hope. I left treatment determined to not just survive, but to LIVE! During this National Eating Disorder Awareness week, may you reach out to someone you know that is struggling. Everybody knows someday. Here's to my favorite therapists who walked so much of this journey with me and believed in me every step of the way. Jan, Maira, Felicia, and Brandis…..thank you!!!!

Believe

 

Meet Christabel(left) and Judith (picture above). Stories of agony….but God is writing a new story of beauty for both of them.

 It was a typical day for Judith. She was drawing water at the well and I can imagine she was humming some tune and chatting with her friends. What she did not know was that her life was about to change forever. She began to see armed individuals and soon after she saw many huts lit on fire. She ran home and saw her parents lying in blood. Her father had already fallen dead and the rebels forced Judith to kill her mother. She was immediately taken by the rebels and tied up with other girls. They were given very heavy loads to carry on their heads and their journey started into the bush. Those that failed to walk either received 100 or more strokes (whips) or were killed. “In the bush I could only see blood….the suffering started on my life”.

 Christabel was born in captivity. Her mother was abducted and given as a wife to one of the top commanders (second in command to Joseph Kony), Otti Vincent. Her mother produced with Otti Vincent and Christabel was born into chaos, torture and sorrow. Imagine, a toddler witnessing such extreme acts of violence. This was her normal, this was all she knew. Her mother was killed and after that moment she was separated from her father, Otti Vincent. She was able to see him once more and then never saw him again. She later learned that he was killed after Joseph Kony thought he was agreeing to peace talks.

 Both complete orphans. Both filled with grief and agony. Yet, hope wins. They have dreams and believe that God has amazing and wonderful plans for them. “God was looking for me”, says Christabel, after describing how He had protected her and lifted the heaviness off of her heart. Judith, who at one point could not even utter one word of her story, now presents herself with such strength and expectation. She dreams of being a psychiatric doctor to help others who have been affected by the LRA. Both of these precious jewels have felt the healing touch of Jesus and believe that they have purpose. Their past does not define them…if anything it pushes them to dream bigger, trust in hope and to ultimately believe.

 This Christmas you can give a gift that will continue to show all of these children that we believe in them, love them and are standing with them in their dreams and hope for the future. Will you BELIEVE with us?

 Have a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!!

 www.exileinternational.org

 

 

We Need Pain

I don’t even know how to document all that has happened this summer; so much on my heart and in my mind. Thankful that I have a God that knows it all!

 From the beginning all my expectations were thrown out the window. I walked into something that was completely different than I imagined…but honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was amazing to be able to walk alongside Children of Peace in their beginning stages and to have a hand in implementing the Peace Clubs…Such a gift and an honor that Exile gave me.

 And now I am preparing to say goodbye. For how long, I have no idea. I am at a loss for what is next and how God wants to continue to use me here. I have no doubt that I will be back…I KNOW I will be back…but when, how, in what role and capacity….I have no idea!

 I am leaving filled with gratitude. I have been so honored to hear these children’s stories and to have the privilege of working with them. I know I have mentioned this numerous times, but I learned more about love, healing, pain, forgiveness, obedience and hope these past months than any other time in my life. Many women and children trusted me with their pain and I freely entered into it with them. At times, yes, it was over bearing and too much to handle…but if they actually walked it and survived it, then I could listen to it.

 

There were moments when I would start my day and not want to hear of another child having to kill or being burned or drinking urine or eating human flesh…but God gave me grace and super natural strength for those days. There were days when my heart didn’t react to a story. Those days scared me more than any other. It was a sign that I wasn’t present and was blocking the depth of the pain that child walked through. It scared me that the stories started sounding the same and I was lumping them all together.

 But then a few days later I would break. I would feel again. I would have days of weeping for the children and all they have experienced. I liked those days, I finally felt alive again.

 I believe my heart knew the days that my spirit needed protecting to make it through the day. God gave what was needed in every moment of everyday. Through all the emotions, which changed on an hourly basis, I am thankful that I have a God that never changes and remains the same….always.

 The question I wrestled with the most these past few months?  “Where is God in all of this?”  The people I talk to everyday seem to know and they are the ones that had to experience the horrific events…so why can’t I understand it? They believe without a doubt that God is good and that He has a plan for them. Do I believe it? These past few months I have been so challenged in believing in the goodness of the God and in his plan for these individuals.

 After hearing story after story of torture and death, I was struggling with knowing how to respond. I often remind them of God’s love for them and how strong and important they were. But I noticed that as I shared with them I was questioning if I even believed what I was saying about God.

 But then there were days when I believed it. Days when I was on my knees because of the hope and strength I saw in the kids. Children who have chosen to forgive, who love and dream and desire to be so much more than their past. My eyes are able to open a little bigger and I can see a fuller picture. I can see the beauty in their pain. I can see how God has been good to them. I can see how God has protected their life. I can see how the only reason they are standing before me is because of the healing hands of God. Nothing else can explain it. God is in their smile and in their laughter.

 

I am amazed at how God uses pain in our lives to bring greater things. Pain is so needed in our lives. I think of a quote that says “ It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply” by Charles Swindoll. I am tempted to put a value on my pain vs their pain…but pain is pain and we need it to draw us to the heart of God. They get it. They praise and dance and bow down before God after watching their parents get chopped to pieces or burned to death. They cling to the heart of God.

 These children and adults know suffering, which can only mean that they will be effective for God and know more than any of us how to rely on Him for the rest of their lives. God watched as His one and only son was brutally beaten, whipped and had nails driven into his hands. God is not a stranger to pain and there is always a plan….a perfect, loving and good plan.

 God is breathing life into these children. A holy roar of redemption is being heard. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is healing, hope and FREEDOM…..

 

The Spirit of the Lord is here…..

 

My Teachers (Part 2)

Mark- Man of JOY

 I first met Mark a few months ago. I was visiting a home out in a disabled community and Mark heard that there was an American around. He walked to find me and I instantly fell in love. His accent, his passion and his joy overtook me.

He has been blind since the age of six months. He doesn’t know life to be any different and when you meet him there is no doubt that he has not let losing his sight stand in his way. He has experienced pain and struggle in every sense of the word. He lost his first wife and six of his children to the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). Only one child remains and his son now lives by him with his wife and their two children (with another on the way!).

Mark shares with me that numerous times he had to run from the rebels. Can you imagine not being able to see and knowing that people were being killed, kidnapped and mutilated all around you? He told me that his children would take his hand and run with him, he trusted them completely to lead him to safety.

Mark is now married to his second wife Helen. She is crippled and he communicated that because he is blind it is expected that he marry another who has a disability. He walks to Lira Town every Friday, 8 miles, to go and beg. If he makes enough money he can catch a ride back to his hut with few shillings left over. The last time that I was with him he shared with me that having a disability does not mean inability. Amen! Mark is determined, strong, witty and most of all incredibly joyful. When I run up to see him he is dancing, grabs me in an embrace and starts jumping up and down. He shared with me that he NEVER would have imagined that a white person would visit him. Oh Mark, you have changed my life. You have taught me what JOY means…not happiness which is fleeting and inconsistent…but inner, ever-lasting JOY, which can only come through Jesus!

 

Evelyn

Woman of Obedience

I travel to a community Agweng once a week and this is where I met Evelyn. She always greets me with singing, dancing and the high pitched “aye, aye, aye, aye!!”…not sure what they call that here J

It wasn’t until I visited her hut when the Colorado Team was here that I truly saw her soul and her pain. She knelt before us, holding her child and began weeping. She shared her struggle and her suffering. She was married but her husband was killed by the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). She was barren, but she did not let that stop her from being a mother. She took in a girl and a boy and raised them as her own. They were both captured by the LRA and taken into captivity. The boy never returned.

The girl returned…..pregnant and with HIV. She gave birth to a son and then she passed away due to illness. Evelyn now cares for the child and she has contracted HIV from him. She shared with us that she has been living in intense pain for the past year due to fibroids in her stomach. I never would have known. She never shared before about her physical pain. She walks miles every week to see me when I come to Agweng. She works so hard every day to take care of the children and provide food…..all in intense pain.

Through some very generous donors we were able to get her to the clinic and arrange for her to have surgery! Actually, as I am writing this she is getting operated on! She was so thankful and communicated that this has changed her life.

However, through it all, even before she knew that she was getting the surgery, Evelyn taught me about obedience. She says “yes” to God even when it is hard and even what it hurts. She still dreams even when her desires are not yet met and she doesn’t know if they will ever come true. She says “yes” to caring for orphans that need a mother to love them, even if she might not have any money or any food. She says “yes” to life….no matter what comes with it.

Thank you Evelyn; for showing me what it looks like to be obedient even when it is hard and you want to give up. Thank you for CHOOSING to take in orphans as a single mother and loving them like they are your own. You are being obedient and faithful to God’s commandments of taking care of the fatherless.

 

My Teachers (part 1)

I love how God has drawn my heart to the elderly community here in Lira. I just seem to gravitate towards them and have learned countless lessons from listening to them share their heart. I thought I would do a post on some of the individuals that have impacted me in a deep way. Every time I leave them I am inspired and challenged. They get so much more than I ever will and have such a vast understanding of God’s character that I hope someday to attain.



Lucy

Woman of Forgiveness

We were out with the Colorado team doing home visits. We stopped to visit a gal, Margaret, who is in her early 20’s and is taking care of 2 of her own children plus 8 (I might not be correct on the exact number) of her siblings. She left her marriage to take care of her siblings due to both of her parents dying.

We walk up to a couple of huts and I see an elder lady sitting off in the distance, under a tree on a straw mat. I am greeted by a huge smile and a hug. I sit down next to her and begin to hear her story. She tells me that she lost all of her children and her husband to the LRA. Margaret is her granddaughter. She recounts the day that the LRA came and abducted her children and killed her husband. She lied to them when they asked her where her husband was because she knew what would happen if they found him. They tore inside her hut and found him there. Because she lied, they came and sliced off her big toe. She tried to get up and run away, but when she did she broke all of her toes on her right foot and they are now all bent at a 90 degree angle.

I looked her in the eyes and asked her “how do you get up every day?” “How do you keep moving forward?” Her answer, “God keeps me going and I forgave the rebels for what they did”

I am in awe and ask “How did you forgive?”

Lucy replies, “Because God tells us to. I forgive because God tells me to forgive. Those rebels knew not what they were doing. They were children, forced to kill.”

We ended our time with some singing and praying. I walked away wanting to forgive like Lucy forgives. I still get to see Lucy often and she is truly free because she chose to forgive. There is no other way that I can explain her radiance and her joy.

Thank you Lucy for choosing to do the hard thing…..you will reap such a great reward.

 

Pilda
 

Woman of Faith

It was the third time that I had visited the Barlyonyo Massacre Memorial Site (post on this to come later). This time I was there with the Dallas team. Every time that I go I hear a REALLY hard story and leave so angry and confused, wondering how this all ever happened. To be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to going on this day because I didn’t want to hear another story. But God always has different plans for me J

The team was listening to some of the local leaders share about the happenings on this day and since I heard it a couple of times before I decided to walk around a bit. There are often many individuals from the community that come when we arrive and my eyes fell on this lady, Pilda.

I knew there was a story to be told as I scanned her body and saw scar after scar and such deformation of her skin. From head to toe she was wrapped in a terrible memory. Before she said a word I was already fighting back tears.

I began to get to know her and her story started coming out. She shared with me that she was in the displacement camp when the rebels came. The rebels entered her hut where she and her husband were staying. They forced them both to lie down and they put grass on top of them and lit them on fire. They left and then set the hut up in blaze. Pilda was miraculously able to escape, but with tears in her eyes she talks about then watching the hut burn knowing that her husband was inside.

“How do you keep living?” The only question I know how to ask after I hear such a story.

"God” “I am thankful that I am alive and He keeps me going”

I look at Pilda and I share with her how at times, people in America, such as me, often begin to blame God and get very mad at God when bad things happen. She gasps! The thought was absurd to her. “No! God is ALWAYS good!” she says.

We take a short walk and I slip her some money to get some new sandals and some food. She looks at me and says “See, I knew God would take care of me today and He did because He sent you.”

Wow, such amazing Faith. Thank you Pilda; for modeling and teaching me what it looks like to never doubt God and His goodness.