Sorry about the lack of blogs last month! It was a pretty crazy time in Kenya, and I’d like to share a story with y’all about a girl I met. This month, we have been working at the Thika School for the Blind. It’s an amazing place on so many levels. The mission is to teach students who are visually impaired to compete for university, and then jobs with their able-bodied peers.
I met a student, fifteen-years-old, who can still see, but her eyesight is deteriorating. For some reason, she latched onto me. When I say latched, I mean that physically as well as emotionally. Over the course of two weeks, I got to hear about her life. Her dad died when she was young, and her mom passed away a year ago. She lives with her uncle and cousins when she isn’t at school. Despite all of the loss and hardship she has experienced in her life, she gave away love with the sincerity and innocence of a child. She was also hungry for love, and it was an awesome opportunity for me to share the love of Jesus with her.
It was stretching for me. Many of these students are big on physical touch, because their eye sight is so poor. Imeldah was no exception. Pretty much every moment we spent together she was hugging me, holding my hand, or had her are around me. Now, I would never say I dislike physical touch, but it’s definitely not my love language. However, after three hours straight of clinging, I must admit that it was testing. Fortunately, communicating Jesus’ love was a lot more important than my personal comfort. So I continued to love her.
I think that there is a misconception that sharing the love of Jesus is hard and uncomfortable. I know that I have felt this way before. But, quite frankly, I think that this mentality has more to do with us than him. I think it comes from a lack of understanding of the love that Jesus has shown us. Not to sound condemning; I think it’s accurate to say that everyone, to a certain extent, has a lack of understanding of how much he or she is loved by the Creator. Because his love is no deep and we are so finite, we cannot fully comprehend the depth of his love.
But I digress…
The point is that the more we are rooted and established in the love of the Father, the less fear we have about anything. This includes the fear of rejection, fear of a lack of control, fear of failure, fear of abandonment. The fewer of these fears we have, the freer we are to share the love of Jesus. Because then, it’s not about us. It’s about sharing something that we have been freely given, but never deserved. The more we understand that, the more we can share it without any thought of ourselves.
“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
