Emotionally, I feel like the shirts that I wash on the race: soaked until I can’t absorb anymore only to be wrung out until there’s nothing left. I had to leave Wipe Every Tear today… As our bus pulled away from the house, twenty women gripped the bars of the fence with tears running down their faces, and my own tear-streaked face matched theirs as I waved frantically goodbye, cheek pressed up against the window. No one in my team spoke for twenty minutes as the van weaved in and out of the busy traffic in Quezon City, each blast of the car horn taking us farther away from the girls whom over the past month have taught me more than I’ve learned in my 23 years of life about love, faith, and forgiveness.
This is the hardest aspect of the race. It’s not sleeping on a rocky field because my sleeping pad deflated, having a team member go home early, or the awkward tension during a particularly heated feedback session.
No, the hardest part comes after the nights you stay up until two o’clock in the morning with a girl who has quickly become your sister talking about things very few people know, such as your biggest failures and regrets, while she shares with you about the death of her parents and how she had to begin prostitution to feed her brothers and sisters. It comes after taking a girl that has never been to the movies to see Best of Me and leaning over to tell her about oak trees, swamps, and crawfish because it is filmed in Louisiana. It comes after walking hand-in-hand with a woman who used to be a prostitute through the red-light district because she trusts you and wants to feel close to you, despite the looks people are giving you because they think you purchased her. It comes after she invites you to come to school with her for the day and experience her chance for a new life, all the while showing you off to all of her classmates as her best friend from America.
The things that wreck me come after a month of giving 100% of my heart to another person over the course of a month, trying with everything I have to show them how much Jesus loves them by loving them with the same intensity, and discovering what a permanent difference it makes in my life to be loved unconditionally in return… and then having to leave.
My 40 sisters from Wipe Every Tear have taught me that no situation is too damaged and no person has wronged too much to be forgiven because these women forgive their family, bar managers, customers, and mamasans who contributed to their involvement in prostitution.
They have taught me that loving someone well means seeing them tear up from being homesick on Thanksgiving and hugging them until they are smiling again. It means playing with their hair for the entire length of a movie without them asking. It means telling them they are beautiful as soon as they get up in the morning, every morning, and meaning it because you truly believe God made them beautiful in His image. It means cooking extra pancakes for breakfast because you know Americans love pancakes. Most importantly, they have taught me that anyone can teach someone who Jesus is and change their life simply by being the people He has called us to be.
Because of these women and how they have changed my life over the past month, I can learn from the strength that they’ve taught me by truly trusting in God and his goodness. I can have faith that the girls found value in themselves by my love for them in return, leave my sorrows and broken heart at the cross, and lean on Him for the strength to invest 100% all over again, not just for eight more months but for each person that He gives me the chance to show love to everyday for the rest of my life.
