So we’re coming into month 9 and if I’m completely honest my heart is a little weary. After almost 9 months now of seeing constant poverty, brokenness, and many other discouraging things, my heart is tired and in trying to guard itself has grown somewhat apathetic.
Coming into Santo Domingo Xenacoj, Guatemala, it would be easy to inadvertently check out and just coast through ministry this month while looking ahead to the end of the race which is just around the corner. Convicted of this mentality the Lord revealed what He desires and how He’s not entirely done with me yet and he’s not done breaking my heart for what breaks his. I’ve been compelled to make that my prayer since arriving in Guatemala. “Break my heart for what breaks yours Father, let me feel what you feel, love through me and overwhelm my soul, eradicating all traces of apathy and indifference. Light the fire that was burning so passionately for you in the beginning once again. Pour me out as an offering, break me and take away anything unpleasing within me.” I was honestly a little fearful to pray those words because God is faithful to answer and it’s a hard prayer to pray because you never know how exactly He’s going to answer you or when. We have no control over the timing and what it looks like. We pray and believe and wait in faith for Him to move.
And move He did. It was on a Friday when my team and I headed to Hope Haven, a Christian wheelchair factory that also employs people who are in wheelchairs themselves. We split up into different groups, working in different areas of the factory. Some people cleaned and polished the finished products, some moved boxes and got the chance to operate a forklift, and others (including myself) got to sort through the boxes and begin to assemble parts of the wheelchairs alongside a couple of employs who spoke pretty good English. We introduced ourselves through broken Spanish and English and got to work. Over the next few hours I would get to know a man named Byron. He lived in California for 10 years but has been in Guatemala now for 4 months. He shared his story about how he was robbed while living in Cali and while being robbed they hit him in the back with a bat and broke his spinal cord tragically paralyzing him from the waist down. After struggling to continue to pay his rent and bills when his wife left him after the accident, he came in contact with an organization that linked him up with Hope Haven, here in his home country Guatemala. He moved himself and his beautiful 4-year-old daughter Katherine to Xenacoj and has been working and volunteering at Hope Haven ever since. He proudly showed us pictures of his beautiful daughter and I could see how much he truly loved his family in his eyes and the way he talked about them. That’s when I felt it, my heart began to break just a little, not entirely, but enough to know I needed to pray for him before we left. With a few of my teammates we knelt down and surrounded him and covered him and his family in prayer. I wanted to do more, I wanted to help him, I wanted to hug his beautiful daughter and let her know she is loved, and to let Byron know that he his loved as well, despite all of the hardships he’s had to face the past year. Loss of mobility, loss of the love of his life, and probably some pride being a man unable to care for himself as efficiently as he’s been able to the past 30 years of his life are things he faces every single day now.
We prayed and said our goodbyes, looking forward to seeing each other the following Friday when my team came back for ministry. In my head I say to the Lord, “okay God, thank you for breaking my heart for what breaks yours, thank you for allowing me to empathize with him and his family and to pray for him, keep moving in his life and within his family”. I continued praying for him as we got on the bus. Before I realize it, the driver starts to lower the wheelchair ramp for Byron to get on. He’s sitting directly in front of me and I smile and tease that it was good to see him again in what little Spanish I’ve learned over the past week. He starts speaking to some of his friends that were also on the bus and I put my headphones in to “zone out” on the bus ride back to the central park where all of the buses drop people off in Xenacoj. Without any warning or any reason besides God himself, my heart and whole being and soul were suddenly flooded with love. Not a love from within myself but straight from the Father’s heart. There was no other direction I could look other than straight ahead at Byron as the seats in the bus faced each other and he was in his wheelchair directly across from me. God was moving and breaking my heart for what breaks his at the most inconvenient time (funny how He does that sometimes). Byron was in a pretty intense conversation with his amigos so he wasn’t even aware of me anymore but it was like the Lord was highlighting him and allowing me to see him exactly how He sees Byron. My heart became heavy, my lip started to quiver as I was fighting back tears, and I tried my hardest to ignore it but when God decides to answer your prayers and do exactly as you’ve been asking Him to do, who are we to delegate when He’s to move? I finally let go, I finally quit fighting Him, and just let the tears fall. All of the thoughts and words He was speaking about Byron flooded my mind and heart. My heart was literally breaking inside of my chest and there was nowhere to go and no way to hide it. My precious teammate placed her arm around me and just held me as I let the tears fall. Without even saying a word she knew, she knew the Lord was moving and breaking my heart.
When we reached the bus stop, I said goodbye to Byron (no worries, he never noticed the tears), and we headed home. God wasn’t done. It wasn’t until a good hour or so after we got home that the tears stopped. Sitting on the rooftop journaling, the Lord revealed so much of his heart not only for Byron but for every single person that He’s created. He loves hard and his love is a fierce love. It’s an overwhelming love and there’s no stopping it when He decides to move. I’m thankful that His perfect love casts out fear AND apathy, selfishness, and indifference.
The song I’ve posted below is the song that was playing when I first put my headphones in on the bus…
