face

There are only a few people who touch your life at its deepest, who inspire you at your core, and who teach you so much about life just by being a part of theirs. I’m lucky enough to have found one of these people in the newest Clothed in Hope training class. To respect her privacy and her story, we’ll call her Mary.

I’ve only known Mary for 2 short months. Yet these short months with Mary have changed me.

Mary’s life has been difficult. Harder than I could ever imagine. Oppression at every turn. But if you were to come to our center, I’d be willing to bet that you couldn’t pick out which one Mary is. I surely wouldn’t have pegged her for being quite possibly the most oppressed woman I’ve ever met on the day I met her.

I met Mary the first time I went to our new center to meet our newest class back in late June. Mary looked a little different from the other women, she was timid, but she was intriguing. There was something special about her. Before she left, I asked her how she ended up in this new class. Mary responded not with a typical closed-off answer of a victim, but she poured out her heart to me as a woman desperate for a friend, crying out to be heard.

Mary is HIV positive. Mary is a mother of 6. Mary is a widow. Mary is beautiful.

And the only place that people talk to Mary at any time during the week is at the center. She says that it’s at the Chikondi Community Center where she has made the only friends in her life.

Because Mary’s neighbors know she’s HIV positive. Her family knows. And culturally, she’s to be rejected and left alone. She has had curses placed on her life. Her own relatives have disowned her. And the rare occasion that she gets enough courage to visit them to say hello and extend immense forgiveness, they break the plate, fork and cup she ate off of in front of her, yelling at her that they don’t want her “disease.” They shame her. They embarrass her. The very people who are supposed to love her. All over a horrifyingly-misunderstood disease.

Yet she smiles. Yet her eyes sparkle.

Mary’s health has taken many scary paths. A few years back when Mary was very sick with her symptoms, she was taken into a hospital. She couldn’t move her arms or legs. She couldn’t speak. Her legs were swollen and her body so weak. Mary was vulnerable and trusted the doctors she believed would heal her. But these doctors didn’t care for her. They tried to poison her by crushing up 20 pain pills into her food. They told her she was better off dead so she wouldn’t be on their bill. They spoke hatred into her life. They killed other patients in front of her eyes as she was unable to speak or move to do anything about it. But Jesus saved her from that. He healed her body from the poisoning and weakness and she was able to walk again. Her life was threated by the very people who were supposed to save her.

Yet she laughs. Yet she gives the best hugs.

Last month Mary told me that her children came home from school and hugged her and laughed. They told her, “you used to cry every day and now you are happy, mommy!” Mary rejoiced with me in that moment. At our center, she’s loved. She’s told that what she does is valuable. That who she is, is a treasure. She’s free to laugh. She’s free to open up about the tough stuff in life. She’s free to create, to design, to learn, to be Mary. She experiences the hope, the joy, the love of Jesus, and she is happy. Happy so much that her children notice and their lives are blessed as a result.

But these past two weeks I noticed that Mary had been absent for every class. During a season change like we’re having now from winter to summer in a week, it wasn’t strange but I got that gut feeling that something wasn’t right. I called Mary and only heard exasperated whispers on the other end. “I’m not okay,” she said.  My stomach flipped over. What does this mean? She told me of a failed attempt to go to the hospital. After being poisoned the last time, she decided to return to receive care she desperately needed. The doctors turned her away yet again saying that she isn’t worthy of their blood, that hers is already infected. And that since she was poor, the best thing would be to go home. When Mary asked, “what will happen if I die?” they replied, “plenty of people have died before, and you won’t be the first.”

I was angry. I was hurt. I was confused. I only wanted to escape the pain I felt inside.

I called Elina asking her to figure out a solution and once I hung up I couldn’t hold back the tears. The frustration. The hurt I felt for Mary. Yet again she was betrayed by the very people who are supposed to be there for her. Yet again her health took a turn for the worse. Yet again she was oppressed for circumstances outside her control.

As the tears came, I wanted to run. To hide. To erase the problem.

But Jesus urged me to come closer. To go deeper. Enter in.

The next day I went to visit her at her home with a few other ladies. I was scared. I felt inadequate. I couldn’t fix this one with my bag of beets, liver, and juice. I couldn’t heal her body or reassure her. But I did want to love her as Jesus does.

I parked my car in a narrow alley way filled with trash and waste water. I walked around the grass fence to enter her home. Children were quietly playing on the doorstep. The compound eerily quiet. Heart racing. We knocked on the door and let ourselves in and found Mary there on the couch.

I don’t think I could’ve prepared myself for what I experienced in that moment. Mary was sitting on the couch, hair a mess, face completely sunken in, sweat covering her entire body. Body shaking with fever. Her ankles the size of a child’s wrist. Her face twisted in pain. Her eyes barely opened. Color gone from her face. Hands curled up. Unable to walk.

This wasn’t the Mary I knew. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

We tried to joke with her to cover the pain and the tension in the room of her condition. We tried to smile. We tried to encourage her but our words failed. Our efforts couldn’t fix it. So I was asked to pray and already-way-too-emotional, I knew it could only be the words of the Holy Spirit that would come from my broken heart. I prayed that Jesus would comfort her, that He would show her how special she is to Him. That the lies she has been told about her identity from family and doctors would be rebuked in the name of Jesus. That her health would be restored by the God of miracles. And on and on. Sobbing. Crying out to Jesus in this little room with my dear friends agreeing with me in the name of Jesus. Flies buzzing around, heat warming up the concrete block room, we brought Mary to the feet of Jesus.

And in that moment a miracle happened. The faces that I’ve only seen be strong and brave broke down into tears with me. Us four women, crying at the feet of Jesus for Him to rescue His daughter from the pain she’s suffered her entire life. Tears of release and freedom streamed down the faces of my friends. All because they knew they were safe in the presence of Jesus to feel what they felt, to be themselves and to be completely loved even in the pain.

At the conclusion of the prayer I looked at Mary. There was no sign of movement other than the shallow breaths she took and the tears that clung to the ends of her eyelashes. I can’t explain the feeling I felt, but I knew I was looking into the very face of God. Tender yet strong. Honest.

When Jesus took my hand to go deeper on behalf of His beloved Mary, He was taking me deeper into pain. Holy pain. The pain of humanity that can only be contrasted with the hope of Jesus and love of God. Entering that pain is painful, it’s scary, it’s difficult, but I believe when Jesus calls us to risk it’s because He wants to show us more of Himself even in the faces of pain.  

And when we feel that holy pain, God feels it too. He assured me that He was in that room crying and praying with us. That the tears on Mary’s eyelashes were His. And that after we had to leave, He would still be there holding her hand, changing her wet washcloth to calm her seizures from her fever, wiping away her tears, and holding her fragile body with strength and security. When the rest of the world rejects her, Mary belongs to Jesus. She is His.

We will keep praying. We will keep approaching the throne of Jesus on behalf of Mary’s life. I don’t understand why she’s had to endure more in her life than anyone I know. I don’t understand why she has felt pain and shame and oppression deeper than I can ever imagine. But I do understand and trust the Word of God when He says He will heal her and restore her. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in Heaven some day, but He won’t go back on His promises. And His love can’t ever run out for dear Mary. Jesus will heal Mary.

As I left her house, I leaned down and gently hugged the bones that formed the only outline of her body. I told her that I love her and that I won’t stop praying for her. 

God filled my heart with gratitude for getting to be a part of Mary’s life today, tomorrow and forever, and for how she’s forever shaped mine in those smiles, those hugs, those sparkling eyes, and especially in the tears that clung to the ends of her eyelashes. How beautiful is the body of Jesus that we can know our present hope and future hope is in Jesus alone. How comforting to know that no matter what evil is spoken into our lives, even by the ones that we love, that Jesus’ voice of love is louder. And with every tear we cry and moment of desperation we encounter, we need only to open our eyes to the face of God before us.