January 09, 2018
Welcome to Nepal!
It was our fourth day of debrief, and I was with two of my teammates walking back to our hostel. Then, right before the turn that led to our hostel, we saw a man on the other side of the road stumble and fall onto the ground. He began to have a seizure- shaking and seizing on the ground in the middle of the road. A crowd gathered pretty quickly- but no one stepped in to help him or even to check with him to see if he was okay. We remembered that our Squad coach is a nurse, and we ran to our hostel and darted in all of the bakeries and coffee shops around us trying to find her. Eventually, my teammate Maggie found her just down the street and brought her to try to help him.
The growing crowd that was watching was not compassionate. They told us several times that he wasn’t sick, the seizures were just because he has a habit of drinking too much. Because of the cause of his illness, they were not concerned about treating it. Oh, how very glad I am that our Lord and Savior works differently. He pulls us up out of the pit, even the pit very much of our own making. Even the pit that we rightfully deserve!
As soon as our Squad Coach arrived, she sent me into a coffee shop next door to grab some soup, bread, and juice, as an attempt to get the man’s blood sugar back up in case that had contributed at all to his illness. He ate all of the bread, drank all of the juice, and ate all of the soup with his shaking hands. He had on nothing more than a t-shirt and a light jacket, and I watched with tears in my eyes as our Squad Coaches gave him their own jacket, and even their own shoes. It occurred to me that we are people and missionaries of limited means. We may have limited means, but we do not have a savior who is limited by anything, and he is certainly not limited in love. His love abounds more and more.
There was a local mountain trek guide standing there with us. He had been graciously translating for us from English to Nepali. We asked him to ask our new friend about his family, and he told us that he had been left by both of his parents when he was a small child. Now, he is a man older than me with a life history rich with loneliness and rejection. I honestly can’t imagine. We asked for his name. My heart broke as he told us that he didn’t know. He did not know his own name. Abandoned by his own parents, the only names for himself that he had ever known came from his life on the street. Carrying the identity and shame of a drunkard. Considering himself worthless and beyond help, just like everyone jeering at him on the streets consider him. He didn’t know his name. But as we sat there on the steps outside of a small grocery store, he asked us for a new one.
Instantly, in my heart, I knew that his name should be Hope. There is no other name more suitable for someone with a background of brokenness, who comes face to face with the kindness of the Lord and savior. We called him Hope, or Man in Nepali. As soon as we spoke his new name over him, a smile spread across his face and he turned to look at us. He called us sisters. “Sister, sister, sister,” he said to us pointing. I realized in that moment that the gap between two people of such opposite backgrounds lessens significantly when we understand that we all have our hope for our lives rooted in the same thing, the name of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection. When we come to him, he takes from us our shame and gives us hope. He takes away whatever our prior identity was- drunkard, cutter, depressed, lonely, suicidal, hopeless, ugly- whatever it may be! And then, he gives us a new name! We have new names! He calls us his children. Children who can leave the things that steal our life and bring us shame and can walk on in freedom, with hope!
That same night, I had the opportunity to share my testimony with my squad through a spoken word that the Lord inspired me to write a few years ago. It was through that moment of vulnerability and sharing that I realized even though I was sharing a testimony about the power of Jesus to break shame, there were still so many ways that I was walking in shame. There are still areas in my life that I choose to walk in shame, instead of in the total freedom that God desires for me. I continue to thank God for putting friends in my life through this race that care so much about speaking life into me. I had a conversation with a close friend last week who told me that I was giving the devil a foothold in my life. The foothold that I have been giving him is shame. For years, I have been choosing to believe the lies that Satan speaks to me that I deserve the bondage of shame for things I have done in my past. Filled with the Holy Spirit, my friend told me than I needed to begin getting angry at the devil for the lies he speaks to me, the lies that I believe. I need to begin to put the lies of the devil in their place, and elevate the truths of the Lord to theirs.
I was reminded of a few of the words from the hymn “Amazing Grace” during that conversation. “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” I am created for freedom in Christ Jesus. My friend spoke it over me that God sacrificed his son on the cross, not so that I could live in bondage from shame, but so that I could live in freedom. I can remember when I met Jesus personally for the first time. In that moment, I tasted the freedom intended for me. But as I have carried on in my walk with Jesus, I fear that I have allowed that freedom to seem more like a dream than something waiting for me if I will only choose it.
“You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you… I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion… will have to pay the penalty… You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.” Galatians 5: 7-10, 13
