There are certain moments in life when you can feel the war around you. The good and the bad battling each other not only around you but within you, through you and over you. We give little thought or credit to the spiritual world around us and its influence on the decision and actions and incidents that occur in our daily life. But without thought, we are subject to their power when it was designed to be the other way around.
“Does she have a pulse?”
We climbed on the Nepali bus with little explanation or expectation for the day. It was a CR day – meaning the ministry of the day would focus on Cabin Restaurants and the woman who worked behind the false restaurant fronts to sell their bodies to anyone with cash. Our hosts in Nepal have built relationships with many of the female pimps, or “mamas” who run these brothels and they’ve established relationships with the women trapped in the industry. They offer alternative employment, dignity and worth.
This day we weren’t going to an actual CR because our friend/translator, L told us it was a Hindu festival day. Instead we would do house visits with some girls they knew through the community. The first house we went to belonged to a beautiful sweet and young girl M. The whole time we were at her house, one translator was receiving calls from the second woman we were going to go visit, S. She had ‘mental problems’ and was a ‘drinker’ and the combination of medication and alcohol was physically and emotionally upsetting her to the point that screaming came clearly through the phone of our translator.
M decided to come with us to the next house with us because she was enjoying having company outside of her work at a Dance Bar. After cleaning up the coke and cookies we all, a bit nervously, set off across the neighborhood towards the screaming woman.
“Uncle!”
Our translator explained that the woman’s uncle had committed suicide two days ago and this was making her upset all weekend. In this explanation I felt the darkness around her life thickening. But we as approached the house it was eerily silent.
Peering through the door it became clear that something was wrong. Sierra did an amazing job in her blog explaining the heavy silence of confusion and grief which then erupted into chaos, violence, accusations and shame as police, neighbors and the entire community grappled with the sexual assault that had taken place moments before our arrival.
We went from checking to make sure she had a pulse and was breathing to following Police orders to help S change her clothing and come out of the one room house so they could talk to her. Still in a state of intoxication and despair, S violently fought our efforts to help her, to hold her, to prevent her lolling head from smashing into the stone walls or floor. Screaming, sobbing, flailing and fighting, we finally had to laid her down on her front porch where she fell back into a deep sleep.
As she lay there, I thought of 2 Kings 4:8-37 when the prophet Elisha resurrected a boy from death to life when his mother came to him. She had no children until Elisha heard the Lord’s heart and promised her a son. So deep was this desire of her heart that she objected “Don’t mislead your servant!” v 16. But it came to be so when he died suddenly, years later, she came straight to Elisha “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?” v28. In response, Elisha runs to the town, to the boy, to the tragedy. When he reaches the house he does something strange…
“Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched out himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm” v34.
He does this twice and the boy comes back to life.
“Take your son”
S lay on the ground at the feet of dozens of accusers, under the gaze of police officers who wanted to assign her equal responsibility in her own rape, caught in a moment between of God’s will for Life and the enemy’s goal to kill and destroy.
And I saw Jesus cover her. He hovered, stretched out on her beaten, broken, sweaty, stained and smelly body. Not only covering her from the shame but taking it upon his own back while breathing warmth, life, sight and breath back into her, His long sought-after daughter.
Just as He did for me. And for you. We have all been beaten, broken, used and disposed of by the world. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually torn apart by the darkness around us and the lies that attack us. He covers us, takes it upon him and gives us His life. Intimately, unconcerned by our filth and dirt, he lays down with us. As much as I had desperately been trying to cradle her body with mine, to block the view of the haughty neighbor, to stare daggers into the most cavalier officer, God is the only one who can hover, brood and birth new life.
The life Jesus gave to S didn’t come into fullness at that moment. In fact the rest of that night was spent with logistical confusion, comforting L who has been in relationship with S for years, carrying unconscious body weight around two different hospitals, wrestling her into and out of taxi’s, catching her arms to keep them from pulling out the IV and in constant prayer.
“Mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands”.
As strongly as I could feel and carry Jesus’ infinite love for this woman, I thought my small piece in her lovestory with him had come to an abrupt end just as it had started. This was a woman our ministry had been pouring into for years having seen little to no long-term changes. Released from the hospital, she came to rest at the ministries guesthouse where we were also staying. For days she remained in a daze, unable to make eye contact, sneaking cheap alcohol to cope with the immeasurable plain, shoulders slumped in painful shame, unaware that the weight wasn’t hers to carry anymore.
Sound familiar? As persistent, powerful and consistent as God’s love for us is, seeing it and accepting it is always 100% our free will. He makes himself readily available, He stands and knocks. He’s already saved and freed, we need only to realize what he has done and what he has waiting for us.
A few days later she stumbled drunk into a worship meeting and I read the exhaustion on L’s face who was caring for her and trying to figure out what to do. A few days after that, we were having a 12 hour worship burn in the prayer room on the roof of the guesthouse that overlooked the mountains, and lake of Pokhara. S and L arrived about an hour into it and something happened. Something you may have a hard time understanding if you have yet to experience it yourself.
As one woman laid hands on her and began to pray, more people joined, praying in the spirit as the atmosphere shifted around us to let the light in. It started quiet and grew in volume and power as we continued worshipping next to them. Suddenly S, with a voice loud and clear, shot her hands straight in the air and cried out to Jesus. Tears streaming and a voice declaring, she spent the next 20 minutes with Him, enraptured by his cleansing love.
I honestly don’t believe I could overemphasize the change that occured in S that night. The next day as she started her new job with the ministry, she giggled and laughed and exuded a powerful sense of peace. She held eye contact, she gave everyone hugs, she glowed with the beauty of a bride on her wedding day. She couldn’t stop talking about her time with Jesus and how much he loved her, how much she loved the worship night, how well she had slept that night safe in his arms.
The city decided to press charges on the man who assaulted her, which is a miracle in the most modern western countries, let alone in a small town in the Himalayas. The hospital had been able to perform a rape kit, the police had witnesses and the community suddenly began to believe her story. The ministry expanded as information and funds came in to start a third home for the women they serve, each of whom are leaving dark jobs and taking steps toward a new future. S and her daughter will be there to start it.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
It doesn’t make the assault go away, but it transforms the assassination attempt into an even stronger life. The war around us wages on, but darkness doesn’t have its own kingdom. It only occupies areas where we haven’t yet evicted it.
“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” John 1:5
