Oh holy depth of pain.
There’s no room for intentionality here. In the murky deep waters of hurt and ache and breathless helplessness.
Deep, filling breaths don’t exist here. Shallow fast ones. That’s all that bring life.
Running and stopping. Heaving and crying. And then slowly starting up again.
That’s what lives here.
Courage looks different here too. Instead of pretty words and poems and intentional smiles on rough days its all about forced smiles and heavy limbs that take baby steps with 100 pound weights on each leg.
The burden is so strong that you find your courage lies in just carrying it.
That’s what I feel living here at El Shaddai Orphanage.
That’s what it’s like to look in their eyes.
Her eyes.
Behind them, days upon days hide. Yelling and abuse and abandonment live. Nights hide. So many nights that haunt. They hide there.
I can see the flicker of the past move in her eyes as she scans the room.
Scans me.
Waiting to be hurt.
And left.
And scared.
Again.
My heart heaves and cries out as I feel only glimpses of her pain. I hold out my hands to try and catch the broken pieces falling around me, but I’m inept. In and of myself, sure. But even with Jesus, even in His greatness, I feel like I’m failing.
There’s so much.
The black hole of a life filled with pain and abuse, living in a country with even more. Living in a gated community protected by the vultures outside who hunt your purity. Who want to trade your little girl for woman as fast as they can.
Heaven is the only hope that lives here.
And it lives so quietly.
Some days I want to take a megaphone to it. To Heaven. And His love. Here.
But really does that help?
When I yell His name at them do they know it more?
It’s so foreign that it’s like I’m yelling a different language to them. Shouting anything doesn’t help. It only brings confusion and chaos.
So I settle on Heaven in my heart in the morning. I sit down on a rock and breathe in the mountain air. I watch the sunrise and am reminded of His goodness and provision. I cry and question why, knowing my questions are pointless but that He hears me and wraps His arms around me.
He catches every single tear I cry.
Every single tear she cries.
And then it settles around me.
Suffering.
It demands to be felt. And heard.
I feel it. I hear it.
It’s hard for my heart to settle on that. I want to love and change and hold and care.
And don’t worry, I still will.
On a day, in a moment, when I breathe a little deeper.
When she smiles wide and laughs, surprised. When I’m caught in the middle of a dance party and see girls just being girls.
No orphans here.
Not in those moments.
But this month I have the faintest idea that Jesus is asking me to set down my megaphone for Him and wade in the murky waters of pain. Sit and be here a bit. After all, just being in the water changes the water, right?
Old habits die hard.
Thanks Jesus for the hope of Heaven when Earth is just too much.
