We’re working with so many different groups that it’s easy to have some that are favorites and others that I don’t really connect with. What’s been awesome this week is that God is impacting me through the groups that I thought I wasn’t connecting with. One of my most powerful experiences this month started out with me painting the nails of a 19-year-old girl named Naomi. It can be really hard interacting with solvent addicts because the heavy users are completely out of it so much of the time. This is what my time with Naomi looked like at first: she was sitting on an old mattress in the middle of the bus terminal, and I was sitting at her feet. This particular group hangs out on the concrete area in between two streets where trucks and buses pass through. The whole time I painted her nails she didn’t look at me, and her solvent rag never left her mouth because she was inhaling the drug non-stop. When I was ready to paint the other hand, she switched the rage quickly and went right back to inhaling. Periodically she’d wet the rag again from the bottle tucked into her shirt, but that was about the most activity I saw from her. She’d give one word answers to the questions I asked her, then go back to staring into space. The only time I saw her smile was when I pointed out that her nails matched her pink pants, and she seemed to like that.
I’ll admit, usually when I’m trying to interact with someone this out of it, I’ll spend a little time with them, paint their nails and ask a few questions, then I’ll move on to someone who actually responds to me. I’m not sure why God put Naomi on my heart so heavily, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was supposed to stay with her. If nothing else, for some reason I just couldn’t stand the idea of her getting high alone. So I sat with her. For a long time, on the concrete. It was awkward. If you’ve never tried sitting with someone you don’t know for an extended period of time, without talking, you’re missing out on one long awkward moment.
I offered to pray with her and she agreed. I wanted to pray in Spanish so that she would understand me, so it was a fairly short prayer. Our contact had told me that he believed that she had been pressed into prostitution, and that the solvent was her escape from reality. She reacted very fearfully to the men in our group, and she had scars and burn marks on her neck and chest. When I prayed for her I just kept thanking God for his beautiful daughter. I just wanted her to know that she was beautiful.
After about 15 minutes of silence I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I asked Naomi if she wanted to color. She nodded, and spent some time drawing hearts and writing her name. We talked about her drawing a little bit. Actually, I talked about it and she looked at the ground. After that I made it another 15 or 20 minutes before I started my own drawing. I’m no artist, so the best she got was a tree with a sun above it and a river flowing past it. I decided it was fitting because it was my idea of a peace. About halfway through I noticed that Naomi was watching intently, and that her solvent rag had fallen unnoticed on the ground by her feet. I’d been with her for close to an hour at this point and it was the first time she’d let it out of her hand.
I sat with Naomi for probably another half hour or so before it was time to leave. I wrote, “God bless you, God loves you” on the picture I’d drawn and left it with her. In the time it took me to walk over to my team and turn around, Naomi had moved over to the local solvent seller and was purchasing more of the drug. It’s not like it surprised me, but it was still discouraging.
As we were walking away from the group a few minutes later someone grabbed my arm, and when I turned around Naomi threw her arms around my neck and held me in one of the tightest hugs I’d ever experienced. When she let go, she was beaming at me, and it broke me. I have no idea what shifted in her that made her respond to me after more than an hour of nothing, but my heart was overwhelmed by this girl. I thought about her the rest of the day. I don’t know Naomi’s story, but it started me thinking about the things that are done to women like Naomi, either in the sex trade or just in the rough life they live out on the streets, and I felt rage rise up in me like never before.
This is what I’m learning about rage: we should be moved to rage at the things that occur in this world. However, rage has to be tempered by the love God has for the people in the world and it has to go hand-in-hand with compassion. I had to be careful not to let my rage Naomi’s behalf turn into resentment or unproductive anger. I want to be enraged for a cause or an individual so that it can inspire change instead of hopelessness.
Please pray for Naomi, and the many others like her. She promised me she would return this week, and it’s been heavy on my heart that this will be the last chance I have to spend time with her before leaving Guatemala. Please pray also for my heart and the hearts of my team. This is only month one – we will have countless more reasons to become enraged at what we see, and just as many opportunities to choose joy instead of being discouraged.
