“Bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair”
Yesterday as part of our ministry we decided to go to a mental facility and visit the patients there and hang out with them. I didn’t really prepare myself for what the hospital was going to look like, I just was going to go with it and whatever kind of hospital it was I was ok with it. I had expected it to be a normal hospital with sick patients and we would go in and pray for them, but as we were walking to the hospital I realized that that wasn’t the kind of place we were going to.
We arrived there and it was more like a nursing home, or just a place where people put their family members because they didn’t want to deal with their “issues”. I walked in and saw a room full of people who were in elderly bodies, but had minds of 4 or 5 year olds. I sat down in a small group of them, 2 ladies knitting and a man much younger than the rest of them. The man spoke english or better yet he spoke the english he learned from the t.v. and he began talking to Ruth and asking her questions. As I sat there watching these women knit their socks it got me thinking. Thinking of life and how valuable it is and how content they were just knitting and how I cant even find contentment sometimes in the adventures in life. They sit there in that room and knit all day everyday and they do it with smiles on their faces.
Then a lady named Donna came over to me and just wanted to hug me and be beside me. She didnt speak much and when she did it was in Albanian so I didn’t know what she was saying but for some reason she just wanted to be beside me. One of the nurses came over and asked her a question and Donna answered her and the nurse translated to me. Donna had told her that I was very beautiful and she loved me and that out of everyone that had come I was her favorite. I don’t know why or what attracted her toward me, but knowing that I was a light in her day and that she saw something different about me was very encouraging.
We left that room and went on to a different part of the hospital, the part where the patients are worse off than in the room we were before. Going to this part I was feeling very good and I loved this. I love the elderly and I love making people smile so this was great. We walked into the other part and immediately I got nervous or scared. I didn’t want to be scared, but sub-consciously I was. I felt myself tense up when the patients would reach out for my hand or walk near me, and that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted it to be easy like in the room before where people would just sit and smile at me and I could kind of communicate with them. I wanted it to not be scary like I was going to catch a disease if I touched them.
It was in that moment that the Lord softly reminded me that it doesn’t matter if they can talk to me or even if they really understand me, its just me being there and smiling and them smiling back and me looking into their eyes and showing them that I do see them and I do care. Just because they look a different way or they like to eat puzzle pieces, or they just want to line up dominos just to watch them fall down, they are still loved.
In meeting Donna and in the faces of the women knitting, and in the smiles that came across the patients faces in the other part of the hospital I found strength. I saw Jesus. I saw him smiling at me and I saw Him seeking me out and finding beauty in me. While I was there trying to be Jesus to them, they were actually being Jesus to me without even trying.
Im sorry I don’t have pictures to show you these amazing angels, but I didn’t know if I could take my camera with me 🙁
