the stories that wreck me

It's too much, collecting all these stories all at once, one after another after another, day after day.

I don't know how God does it...holds us ALL.  

They're not stories...they are lives.

Lives in the middles of heartbreak and horrors, of dreams and revelations and blessings, of sacrifices and pain and joy.

They don't come easy, these stories. Each person who plops down across from me has paid dearly for these scars, for these wrinkles, for these testimonies.

When student after students spills their lives and finally raises their open palms to signify the end, I grasp their hands and we pray, and without fail, as I ask the Lord to be all that they need, I am in tears. 

In this fifth world, tet anba country, so much is needed.

He says He the one in whom we never hunger or thirst again.

But that doesn't mean we're not bleeding as He heals.

Doesn't mean we're not broken as He works.

Doesn't mean that we can always see His light, even when we are walking in it.

Pray with me today for the man who just left my office.  Seeped and raised in the Voodoo-Catholic combination that so much of the country calls home, calls Haitian, the Lord sent a student near and dear to our hearts who graduated several years ago to reach out to this young man when he was a boy.

Jopnel preached him the Gospel, showed him a totally different way, and when he converted and was baptized, it was with his whole, broken heart...for his family has fought against him from 12 years-old until today.

In high school the Lord appeared to him in a dream, the same dream ten nights in a row, over and over and over. Follow me, I have an entirely different way for you than the way your family has paved. It will break your very heart, take away all that you have, following me. Trust me. 

Ten times the words were spoken, ten times, too many to ignore.

The day he came to Emmaus, his father told him never to come home again. 

During the week he studies and lives here, and on the weekends, he bounces between families in the church, no place to call home.

The first payment, a family in the church paid.

The second payment, he sold all his clothes. 

The last payment, he sold everything else he had. 

He has given his family, he has given his home, he has given all he has to give.

Vacation is in two weeks, and that which he sees the other students anticipate, he dreads as he prays.  He has been an inconvenience on a church family barely scraping by for too long...he feels their struggle and feels the tension...he cannot stay there for the next three months. 

Where will you go? I ask him.

He shrugs, but I hear an echo in his silence.

Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has no place to lay his head.

How are you going to pay for next semester, if you've sold everything you have? I ask, the mother in me.

He slaps the back of one hand against the palm of the other, the Haitian expression of "I see no way."

He told them, "Take nothing for the journey--no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra clothes.

His head now in his hands, his elbows on his knees, I ask him a brutal question.

What is the hardest part, the part that's obviously hurting you today?

Eyes still in his lap, he responds, "My family I care for so deeply has rejected me completely."

For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for me will find me.

Are they angry that you follow Jesus? Or are they angry that you won't follow their plan for your life?

"They think I'm insane," he said quietly. "They think I've gone totally crazy, to follow Jesus at the sake of all else."

When his family heard about this, they went out to take custody of Him, saying, "He is out of His mind."

There was nothing left to say, so we talked to God instead of each other. 

Tears pouring down his cheeks, I prayed to the One who many people still think is crazy. 

I prayed to the One who knew rejection far better. I prayed to the One who gave me a family when He called us to Haiti and we left ours, who is giving us a family when He called us to Mississippi and we left ours, again. I prayed to the One who calls us to take up our crosses, and to the One who also cries with us when they are heavy and piercing. 

I prayed the Word over this brother. I prayed for a place of peace for him to stay. I prayed for literal and spiritual food for him to eat.  I prayed for miraculous provision for him to study God's word. I prayed for courage. I prayed for encouragement. I prayed for peace. I prayed for paths. I prayed for his family.

I praised the Lord for our brother Jopnel, who before we even knew him, before he even came to Emmaus, was preaching the Gospel to rag-tag, difficult children. Who was putting on others the precious burden of following hard after Jesus. 

I prayed with my whole heart.

I took his picture for his file. 

And another student is standing at my door, with another behind her.

I know I keep using the word "inspired", but I don't know what else to use in the face of being so thankful for men and women such as these in the world, in Haiti, and so burdened for them at the same time. 

These aren't just stories.

They're the Gospel, lived out.

Praise the Lord.