It always rubs me a bit because the "he" who just made everyone feel so good about their Nikes is actually Gaba, the serious little boy who would never forget to thank me when he got out of our truck at school, then the shy 12 year old who always came to our house to play with little John Kennedy on his back, then the hard-working 14 year old who always managed to help Lily fix her bike.
Maybe Gaba's bare feet help make us thankful for our well-clad toes, but how did team after team after team of shiny-shoed foreigners make Gaba feel? Were the lessons mutual? Was he blessed and convicted by what he saw? Do the impoverished of the world break and change our hearts and lives as we become family? Or do our observations of the impoverished simply thank the Lord that we are "blessed" and move us on?
I never knew what to do with all that. I still don't.
What I do know...
These last 2 days, I've been honored to witness unspeakable-difficult situations lived with deep joy and genuine trust.
And I am humbled.
I have struggled and cried out and dealt with bitterness and questions and darkness and doubt--and then spent precious time with several people last night and several other people again today who are all facing different kinds of heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching cancer, cancer and chemo and surgeries and radiation and all the awful things that come with it--from places of genuine sweetness, trust and gratitude.
We talked and ate and questioned and listened and asked and wondered and compared and prayed...and I never heard a bitter word, not from either family. Such trust emerged, again and again, that though they are walking through valleys of shadows unlike anything I've known, He is close, He loves, and He is to be trusted.
As they walk by faith through this intimately painful and helpless journey, I watch in my clean shoes.
But I will be no temporarily-phased onlooker.
As we become family with all this family of strangers, my heart breaks and is changed.
Where there is much that could be bitter, they are sweet. Where there is much that has been broken, they are trusting with the pieces. Where there is much that has been taken, much lost, much unknown, much unfair...they spoke only of the Lord's goodness, again and again.
Lily asked tonight if I was sad remembering the death of my mama, 17 years ago today, and as I looked down, all I found on my feet was genuine gratitude, my mother healed and free and His, forever.
Death, where is your sting?
As we prayed the girls to sleep, we all praised the Lord. Not for good health, not this time, but for the POWERFUL testimony these brothers and sisters around us are radiating in a time when many eyes are upon them. I praise the Lord for these testimonies for my children, testimonies of hearts grateful in any circumstance, of families relying fully upon the Lord in dark times, of men and and women and children choosing to trust Him instead of abandon Him, instead of blame Him, instead of despairing.
I praised the LORD for this exact thing many times Haiti, and I did again, tonight.
What did we just say yesterday? It takes faith to stay full of courage when the storm is raging. It takes faith to stay sweet when everything has gone so sour. It takes faith to stay expectant when we've been so disappointed.
My heart.
It's been challenged and changed and charged a bit today by the testimony of FAITH of several suffering stranger-friends around me.
May we not be grateful for our shoes, but take them off.
May we not be swayed by the broken, but may we be altered.
May we surrender our precious places to love well the hurting.
May we not observe broken at six feet, but BE broken too, alongside.
May we not gain our mountain top experiences at the expense of others, but testify instead from the valley of the shadow of death of His goodness.
May the powerful testimonies
of mighty-mustard seed faith
we are changed by today
be mutual.
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