Today after visiting a blind man that at age 99 can play the accordion, we walked my friend, Hope*, home. Hope is the housekeeper at our ministry home, but she is much more than that. She invited us into her home, lined with roaming chickens, cats, and dogs. The inside is sketched into my mind. 3 rooms. The kitchen and two bedrooms. The size of all three are probably the size of most American’s living rooms. I could see through the cracks in the cheaply placed wooden walls, and the wooden frame and supports were held together with cloth ties. There were 2 beds that housed 5 people. There was no room (or money) for food to be stored. A handful of dishes were drying upside down on the stovetop. As we made conversation, the dog crawled in from the hole under the wall, making me aware of the lack of insulation and poor protection from outside nuisances. I didn’t realize how much my heart was aching for this woman until I began to cry for no apparent reason.
Now, knowing her story, the depths of my heart are piercing, for I desire for her to have the sun and moon. After our women’s ministry meeting last night where I shared my testimony with the group, Hope opened her story before us. Hope found out when she was 15 years old that her parents were not actually her parents. They had found her in a trash can as a baby. Her mother, a prostitute, had abandoned her. After her adopted father passed away years later, Hope tracked down the siblings of her birth mother, whom all had been abandoned in similar ways. Regardless of the lasting consequences brought on Hope and her siblings by her mother’s choice of profession over her children, Hope found herself in the same profession. Her current husband, or man, was paid to bring her out of that lifestyle. So many questions remain. Is he a good man? Is this a present day story of Gomer and Hosea? Or does this man, a drunkard, now own her? Each question left unanswered. This man was not home when we arrived. Hope said there was no man living with her. No husband. No boyfriend. However, she had expressed the night before that they were having problems. Had he left? In Hope’s eyes, I see an insecurity, a disbelief, that she is beautiful and treasured. She’s blind to the childlike joy that she overflows into others. Inside of this woman with this tattered story, is a woman with a giving and compassionate heart. Her birth sister, 16 years old with a 9 month old baby, was kicked out of her home for being pregnant unwed. She now lives with Hope.
With so little, she has so much to give. My friend and teammate Sara stated it perfectly: “they don’t need what we need; they need what we have.”
* name changed for confidentiality
— Your racer,
KP
