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17 January 2021

it takes a village

Yesterday morning, the girls and I sat around a loving table set with cranberry and rice pudding and scrambled eggs and hot coffee, and chatted for a while with our mutual friend, and a mom and daughter Sofie's age, refugees from a country not far from Haiti. 

Their life there was all the things...beautiful and family and rich and frustrating and hopeless and challenging and home. After years of separation as dad was sent from country to country for little to no pay, their roof collapsed and despite both being doctors, the $40 a month each they made could not replace it...could never replace it. It was the last straw, and they found themselves in Florida with a four year old, speaking no English and trying to figure out where to go, what to do, how to begin all over.

In bashful, broken English yesterday, four years later, she told me bits of how the Lord has guided and protected them, about homesickness and gratitude, about the money they scrape monthly and send home, about the new jobs that are shadows of their old jobs, a whole new system...about the joy of being able to work and provide for their daughter, nonetheless. 

That little dining room felt sacred as she shared the struggles, which resounded as incredible courage to me, the three girls cartwheeling and giggled and singing in the living room while we talked.

We talked about Haiti, too, her husband having been sent there once for an 18 month medical residency, about all the ways Jesus often showed up. She marveled over our decision to have Ben there at home, and I found myself sharing how the Lord provided incredibly for that intense-leap-of-faith-miracle.

I told her about my unexpected night of hard labor, about the joy of introducing not-so-little Ben to our friend and watchman,Yves, the next morning. 

He could have been around that table with us yesterday, I so clearly saw his lined face and wide smile yesterday, his worn hands and awry ring and pinkie fingers, once broken and never set, holding Ben like the most precious of treasures. 

I told her how I had thought Yves would be surprised by Ben's presence, and instead how he took my birth story and shared his part in it. He had seen the lights on in our little house all night and knew Ben must be coming. He had alerted the village to be praying...and had walked the campus around and around all night, praying for me. Praying for Ben. Praying for the Lord to do and be all the things needed. 

The night I labored, I had thought alone, he had labored, too, with our village. Yves had labored in prayer, intimately and exactly what I had needed.

I snapped out of my story to see my new friend and our precious hostess wiping their eyes with me, all of us touched anew by God's provision of the village it takes to survive, to thrive.

When our village couldn't clear the road, couldn't have Ben for me, couldn't help...the nights when I thought I had to labor alone...how many were laboring with me?

As I learned about the grace that has met our new friends, despite unspeakable challenges, as I remembered some of the grace that has met me, I'm reminded anew that it really does take a village.

There may be many hurting in our circles we can't seem to help. There may be much broken in our worlds that we can't figure out how to bring healing to.  There may be some big and real burdens that we don't know how to bear, some circumstances we don't even begin to know how to speak into.

Today, I'm recommitting to doing that most important work, to be the village that our village was for us that night (and how many others?).  May we be walking the midnight circles for one another, lifting up to Him the lights and the darkness, trusting to Him the very much that we cannot do, ushering in His grace upon grace. May we rejoice for one another as He works, may we wipe our eyes with one another as He works, too. May we be for one another reminders of His tangible grace, and let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim that he has redeemed them...Psalm 107:2



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