Her beautifully-weathered face is etched upon my heart.
It’s become the face of every single person I’ve ever missed an opportunity to love on. The face of every stranger I’ve failed to help or encourage… either out of ignorance or fear.
Just as often as I shove God into a box that’s sized and shaped according to the confines of my small imagination, I so often limit what “loving others” looks like. But up until last week, I was quite unaware of this. I had no idea that I, like so many, relegated true, deep actions of love to something saved primarily for family and close friends.
It was our second-to-last day of training camp for the World Race. We were asked to gather with our teammates to pray and listen for God’s direction on how to serve together for the day. Honestly, never before had I come before God — as a group – to ask Him how He’d like us to spend our day. The concept was a bit foreign to me… it was a bit awkward, or rather, I felt a bit awkward. A piece of me wondered whether we would actually hear from God or whether we’d just conveniently spin our own thoughts and ideas into “God’s will” for the day. But in obedience, I prayed and listened.
After spending time in prayer individually, we began sharing what God had revealed to each of us. During prayer, I felt God boldly place on my heart a call to go out and encourage women, especially older women. To my surprise… God put similar things on the hearts of my teammates. Then one teammate, Angela, suggested a visit to a nursing home to which we all agreed was a perfect plan.
Before heading out into the community, we first spent some time encouraging one another (given that we – Team FIERCE – are all women). Once we arrived at a nearby town, we asked some of the locals about the closest nursing home. They gave us a name and an address; we plugged it into the gps, and we hit the road. We ventured out into the country, and eventually to a fork in the road – two forks to be precise. With four different dirt roads ahead of us, and the gps signaling our “arrival” to our destination, we ventured down 3 of the 4 roads, one at a time. Each road ended at someone’s private home. Though this baffled us all, Caroline urged us to venture down the last dirt road, even though a sign atop of it read, “Dead End”.
It was a bumpy decline down that last narrow, dirt road… which ended at yet another house. Ready to give up on finding the nursing home, we circled around the house to head back to camp. As we were rounding the circle, we came upon a rooster in the middle of the path. We stopped the car and waited not so patiently for the rooster to move. We crept up the road a bit, inching just beyond the house, which was fully behind us as Caroline commented, “If an old woman comes out of that house, I’ll pee myself.”
We took once last glance behind us; to our complete shock, standing in the doorway was an elderly woman and her small dog.
Immediately we stopped the car, hopped out and carefully approached her, asking if we could spend some time praying for her. With a slight hesitation in her voice, she replied, “Well… I don’t see why not.”
Crowding around her on a tiny porch, we prayed for her health and over her right ankle, which was wrapped in bandages. We listened to her recall the story of how she first met her (now deceased) husband. We asked questions about her life. We marveled in her presence. We sang hymns to her (perhaps a little less harmoniously than we’d like to admit). Simply stated… we loved on the 90-year-old woman… Bessy Lynn, a complete stranger to us all.
When she asked us how we found her, we told her that in the midst of searching out a nursing home, God led us to her, to which she replied, “God works in mysterious ways.” There’s no other way to explain it; as strange as the experience was at first, it was all the more enchanting, supernatural and revealing of a God who divinely orchestrates moments of great love…. if you open your heart to it.
As we 
were leaving, Bessy Lynn’s final words to us wrenched our hearts, urging us to stay with her, though time would not permit. The words of an older woman who had been in desperate need of encouragement:
“I was about ready to give up and then you came. And I’ve decided to hang in a bit longer.”
It was at that point that I knew without a doubt that God led us to Bessy’s house – that on that day, He elected us to love on Bessy Lynn, a complete stranger.
Reflecting on the experience, I’m blown away by an awesome God, who despite doubt and skepticism, uses us in amazing ways. Despite the fact that we had our own interpretation of His call to encourage older women, He led us to exactly where He needed us to be… because our hearts were open. Never would I have ever considered walking up to a stranger’s house to offer them prayer and love, especially in the United States. The idea just seems too weird – too invasive, too against a culture that loves privacy and personal space. That day God showed us that not only are we called to love amongst the Nations, we are called to love amongst this Nation.
My worldly mind tells me that it’s an absurd thing to do, yet my heavenly heart tells me that in the presence of an awesome God, crazy, risk-taking love is the only thing that matters.
All I can say is that when you claim the freedom God’s set before us, when you open your heart to His call, amazing things happen. Amazing love happens.
Dear Bessy Lynn,
Though I’ll probably never see you again, you have forever changed my heart – you have forever changed my view of love. From here on out, in your honor and through God’s guidance, I’m going to dive deeply into acts of love, no matter how awkward it may feel at first, no matter how little I know of a person.
Though we may have spent time trying to encourage you, I suspect that we received (from you) far more than we offered. For when it gets hard to pour out love to others the way God has called me to, I’ll think of you and say, “I was about ready to give up and then you came. And I’ve decided to hang in a bit longer.”
All My Love,
AJ
