O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.       -Psalm 30:2

I’ve been walking a journey of healing recently, that has been both emotional and spiritual. It’s been a difficult journey. It’s been a quiet, lonely journey. Not because people around me haven’t cared for me…but because this healing process has been internal and complicated.

We know this to be true of physical healing. When your body is ravaged by disease or bones are broken, you can’t heal simply by wishing it would get better.  You need the skilled hands of a physician to diagnose your condition, clean out your wounds, repair the damaged tissue, and set a course for your healing. Healing takes time.

We also know that wounds happen not only at the physical level, but on other levels as well. The journey to healing with these kinds of hurts are similar to the physical ones. To properly heal, it takes time, rest, and a skilled Physician. The journey is lonely. Quiet. Internal. A lot is happening but most of the time, until the scar tissue closes up on top, you can’t see a difference.

Some time ago, a bomb of sorts exploded in my life. I was pulverized emotionally.  My identity was attacked and suffered critical blows. I was silenced. Betrayed by people I trusted. The core of who I am was slandered. Judged mercilessly. Burned. I could barely breathe, my faith in God’s goodness brought to trial.  I stared at mountains of ash that had once been dreams and lifted tear stained eyes to my God asking where He was. The Enemy had prevailed, or so it appeared. I had followed God with everything and instead of obvious victory in a situation, I felt abandoned,  beaten, and bloodied.

It was a dark and painful time. Horrible.  It was easy to believe the lies that my God had left me. It was easy to make agreements with the Enemy of my soul that God did not care.  But truth said differently. Truth shouted that I was not alone, my God was with me.  

…for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”   –Hebrews 13:5

Looking back, I realize that His presence was all that sustained me. He was close to my broken heart just like He promised, even when my tears kept me from seeing Him.  I know it now.  In His grace He sent help, friends and family, swiftly to my bruised soul to begin to  nurse me back to health.

I survived the attack.

But I was not healed. I was still wounded. Deeply.

And at first, knowing I was badly hurt and needed healing, I tried to be proactive. I tried to take over my triage…needing to control this trauma in my heart.  I wanted to be healed. I wanted desperately to feel better. I believed God could heal me. But in my eagerness to hurry up and heal, I tried to heal myself. I prescribed myself with a good dose of forgiveness for those that had hurt me. I filled my days with reading my bible, and turned up the worship music. I drank in lots of truth and surrounded myself with solid community. These were all really good…except for one thing; it wasn’t working. Completely not working. I was still hurt, still, ‘bleeding’ emotionally, still unable to forgive. I finally realized, through God’s endless grace, WHY it wasn’t working.  It was because I wasn’t the doctor. Deep down I really knew nothing about how to close up the gaping wounds in my heart.

One of God’s names in the bible is Jehovah Rapha.{Exodus 15:22-26} It means The Lord Heals. I love it, because healing is one of His names. His very name. His character is to heal our broken places. The God of healing.  Him…Not me.

I could not heal myself. And in truth, I just got in the way. I had the best intentions, but I was not able to do what only He can do. This was where I uncovered a powerful truth. I had to completely and utterly surrender my wounds to Him. Surrender.

The very last thing I felt like doing after the attack I had just been through was to let down my guard and trust enough to surrender. But it was in the total and complete surrender of my painful wounds to Him, the One who loves me beyond reason… that I found the deepest healing. It was when I slowly pulled my hands away from the torn places of my soul that His cleansing mercy seeped in to the deep pain. He was so faithful and so gentle to clean out my wounds and then bind them up. He protectively covered my bruised places with His own scarred hands. He breathed fresh life into the places that had died. He lovingly rebuilt my identity and reminded me where it belongs; in Him. He poured into me rich forgiveness that I did not possess on my own, that I might walk in freedom. It was beautifully miraculous.  When I let go of my time-table for healing, and just let Him be God….the God of Healing, He did. He healed my broken self. He restored my wrecked heart.

In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.    -John 16:33

I do have scars from all of this. I believe I always will. My scars are hidden to most, but they are there. Tender. Sometimes uncomfortable. Twisted flesh that speak of battles fought. Reminders. Not reminders of what the Enemy did but of what my Jesus did.

Reminders of His power to heal broken things.

Friends..I know so many of you are hurting also… and I hope that my story will help you. He wants to heal you too.  He wants to heal those places in your heart that have been ravaged, wounded and laid bare. I know this to be true.  He wants to heal those places in your spirit that hurt so much that they cause you to be untrusting, sometimes bitter and truly unable to forgive.   I pray you will seek and surrender to Him. Jehovah Rapha, The Lord Heals. If He is your Lord, He is your healing.

Those who seek the LORD will not lack any good thing.       –Psalm 34:10

-Kallie

I love happy endings. Don’t you? I intentionally pick books and movies that have them. Life is hard and when I want to escape,  I love stories that end with hope and resolution.

I realize this is not always realistic . We live in a broken world and sometimes there are circumstances, pain, and loss that are horrific, unexplainable, and leave us with more questions than answers.

One of the reasons I recently traveled across the world to Kenya was to visit my dear friends, Juli &  Allison. These friends have founded Living Room Ministries International (www.livingroominternational.org) : a home where no one has to die alone.  They provide dignity and quality of life to people in Kenya who are affected by HIV/AIDS and other life threatening illnesses. Their vision is to create a community of compassion that honors life and offers hope.

Let me just tell you: It is sacred ground. There’s no other place like it.

Come with me on a walk through the Living Room. You’ll never be the same.

Walking in to the breezy hallway you can immediately sense the peace and beauty of this place.  And then you remind yourself, this is a home for the dying. In a matter of moments you’ll be greeted by smiling faces of national caretakers who give their lives to serving people here.  Rachel is one of these angels. With a nursing and medical background she is the clinical director. It’s obvious she is highly educated, but what strikes you most is how she deeply values the individual patients (whom they refer to as “guests”).

You are guided through the hallways into the rooms of guests, many who have traveled miles and miles in hopes of quality hospice care.  It’s often their last hope. Here, no matter their physical condition, they are welcomed as guests, and known by name – so different from what you’d find in the cities where hospitals are filled with people , at least two to a bed, where the conditions are less than ideal. Their stories are listened to. They are individuals whom God loves and they are offered the best emotional, physical, and spiritual care free of cost.

I’m pretty sure if Jesus still lived on earth, this is where he’d hang out.

Walking out to the patio you see many guests lining the walls.  You walk up and shake their hands to greet them, because that’s the culture here. You’d meet Evangeline and Zipporah, women dying of cervical cancer. In hushed tones, you’d hear about their children and though they’re in the last stages of life they somehow smile as they speak. They’re mamas like us. There is a quiet tension in the air: the  reality of pain and death is eminent,  yet a strange peace also hangs in the silence.

You walk  from there down the ramp to  the gorgeous outdoor surroundings. Flowers, and trimmed bushes, and  green lush landscape, it reminds you of what the Garden of Eden may have looked like.  Patients are encouraged to be outside – to enjoy the sunshine- and so mats are laid upon the grass.  In the shade of the trees, they rest.

You meet Eddah, a mama who has suffered with an undiagnosed leg wound for years;  but here she is liveliest of the bunch.  She’ll challenge you to a game of Othello and you’d better watch out because she’s competitive and she’ll probably win!

Nearby, the childlike smile of Sharon captures your heart and though she’s the size of a 5 year old, you learn she is actually 12 -born with HIV and recovering from burns that disfigured her hand and face. Precious girl. She is here, getting stronger, and waiting for the day she can have reconstructive surgery.  You learn that while she’s been here at Kimbilio hospice, her mother passed away at home. She is now another of Africa’s millions of orphans. Jesus, have mercy.

You reach out to greet Violet, and her little bony hand rests in yours. To the eye, she is merely skin and bones one of the most malnourished sweet things you have ever seen.  And then you hear her heart -renching story:  at 17 years old, untreated diabetes  is eating away at her body.  You wonder if she’ll be one of Living Room’s “Lazarus” stories of being nursed from death back to life – you sure hope so.

And finally there’s Chepchumba whose face radiates with joy though her body is contorted with cerebral palsy. She’s been here at Living Room off and on for several years. In this caring environment she progressed all the way from a desperate state of malnourishment to being able to smile and laugh again.  She’s a teenager, whose body has been held captive to this disease. Her groans reveal that there’s so much she’d like to say.  

Up the hill, Living Room employees are carving wood preparing caskets.  The funeral home is awaiting the arrival of another family. You don’t want to, but you wonder…who will be next?

On this earth there aren’t always happy endings. Here, all are prayed for – some will die-being ushered into the presence of the King and some will be stories of victory where they are nursed back to life.  Is God good either way?

How do we respond to what we’ve seen here?

“Seeing suffering does not move me to act if I think of the person as “him”….but when I think of that person as part of “us”, part of “me,” then I am moved to bless.” (Soul Keeping, p. 160)

How then shall we love?

How then shall we live?

These are the questions we are left to wrestle with.

My spirit longs for the day when: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” Revelation 21:4

 -Alyssa

(For more information visit, www.livingroominternational.org)

I remember first hearing the song “OCEANS”at church.

Your grace abounds in deepest waters

Your sovereign hand will be my guide

And there I find you in the mystery

In oceans deep my faith will stand

I will call upon your name. Keep my eyes above the waves.

When oceans rise, my soul will rest in your embrace.

For I am yours and you are mine.

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.

Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me.

I didn’t know then, that this would become my theme song!

 A week before leaving for Kenya, a friend texted me with the message, “are you watching the news?” Immediately my heart sank. I knew it could only mean bad news. With one click of my mouse I read the reports of young people, Kenyan university students who were being mercilously murdered…(especially those who proclaimed to be Christians). I fell to the floor and wept, partly at the horror of this evil and partly at the fear that this raised in me.

Of course, after 13 years of considering returning to Kenya, the week I’m supposed to fly there, there is a horrific terrorist attack. I had already been paralyzed with fear for so long. Now my fear of sickness was just intensified with a fear of violence and danger.  I prayed for God to make a way out.  But deep deep down I knew He didn’t want this to be the end of my story.  “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me  walk upon the waters wherever you would call me.”

“PAIN has a way of clipping your wings and keeping us from being able to fly.” – The Shack.

I knew God wanted me to fly. He WANTS YOU TO FLY.

When oceans are rising and we’re really struggling with keeping our eyes above the waves – He is there, calling us.

In my captivity of fear, friends and family emailed, called, texted, and flooded me with encouragement and reminders of truth. God was in this, He was with me, the fear was not from Him.  There was a full on war in my mind.  I remembered hearing a speaker once say “the enemy comes to take courage out- DIS-COURAGE. Being faithful doesn’t mean the absence of fear….it means we have just a little more faith than fear.”

That’s all I had: just a tiny bit more faith than fear. Maybe that’s all you have too.

And so, on the faith of others, I got on that plane with my friend Jenn. I had printed out the verses that many had sent me and meditated on them for the duration of the flights and the line “your sovereign hand will be my guide” rang through my mind.

Landing in Nairobi, I could sense the tension and grief, and fear among the people as we passed through. I’m imagining it was similar to how New York may have felt the week after 9/11. Grief, disbelief, uncertainty, fear: what would happen next?

I was looking forward to getting to the village. I breathed a sigh of relief as we watched the tall buildings and streets lined with pedestrians be replaced by mud huts, and lush green acres of land, and open space.  I was going to a refuge.

Just when I was beginning to exhale, my missionary friend Juli explained that the statistics we read in the news were closer to home  than we thought. Though the attack was eight hours away, one of her neighbors, a young boy named Gideon was tragically one of the victims. He had been a sophomore. The first in his family to attend university. I can only imagine the sacrifices his family had made to send him and how hard he had worked to get there. Only the most diligent students have the opportunity to attend university. His life had been cut short and now the body was being transported back to our village, for his family to bury him on their compound. They were to arrive on Monday for the funeral. It took my breath away.

My own sin and selfishness grieved my heart. I was so worried about what could happen for me that I hardly grieved for the mamas, and sisters, and brothers who were grieving the REALITY of a loss of their loved one.

Part of the culture here is that as a visitor you have to be ready at any moment to give a speech, or testimony, or preach a sermon.  And so, when Juli’s husband asked me if I’d be willing to preach at their church that Sunday I shouldn’t have been surprised.  But my heart sank.  How could I preach in Gideon’s family’s church when this tragedy had just occurred? “What am I supposed to say? What in the world do I have to offer? Please, God make a way out.” And then I sensed  a phrase very clearly in my mind.

YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS TO FEAR.

Fear was plaguing the minds of many in Kenya, I had tasted that fear too.

And so, I called upon HIS name and asked the spirit of the great Comforter, the only truth, the one who knew what it was to watch his son be murdered, I asked by HIs grace, for Him to speak through me.  God allowed me to  look in the eyes of my brothers and sisters, and together we cried at the pain of this earth and reminded each other that God SEES us. He knows us. He is WITH us. And when fear creeps up and tries to control our minds, we have words of truth to combat the lies of the evil one.   I was reminded of one of our family’s favorite verses of promise: “Do not fear for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10. No matter the storms we face,  from this life to eternity we are offered LIFE WITH HIM.

I saw God give purpose to my brokenness. As He often does, he turned my fear and pain into an opportunity for ministry -to relate with others in His family. AND more than anything, spending time with those beautiful friends that day, we realized we a were more similar than different.  We were all clinging to Jesus.  He was there.

And “there I found him in the mystery. In oceans deep {because of HIM}, my faith will stand.”

Today we are honored to have Shelley Brumfield share her heart with us. She is a wife, mother, grandma, and dear friend who lives in Northern California, but travels to Romania summer after summer to share her heart with children there. 

It happened again this summer— the breaking of my heart. My mind scrolls through the faces and smiles of the children at the orphanages like a slideshow, and I am grateful for the indelible memories of them. Coming to Romania for the 5th summer, I saw familiar faces from past years. Some have grown taller; those that were once little girls are now young ladies, and “little” boys are now looking me in the eye. There are others that have not changed all that much, remaining much the same size and stature as in years past because malnutrition and neglect has had a long term effect on them. Then there are always the new little faces, with scared eyes, reluctant to approach, yet desperate for a lap and to be engulfed in arms of safety, comfort and love.

Why, you might ask, after having your heart broken that first summer, do you go back?

Why, when you know you will experience it all over again?

Yes, that’s it.

That’s exactly it: You know you will experience it all. over. again.

When God breaks your heart, He is letting you experience in a small way, what He experiences, and your heart, in His Hands, becomes a little more like His. In that moment, you see with His eyes and love with His love.

This breaking of the heart is done by the Master Surgeon, who then, with His Divine touch, does the miraculous: He allows your heart to remain broken and changed, but healed too.

That first summer when I mustered up the courage to go to Romania, I did so not knowing the degree of brokenness my heart would experience–and that is probably a good thing. A mission trip in most people’s minds entails going to a different country/culture, helping with physical needs there, and sharing the Gospel. You step out in faith into the unknown and trust that God will be there, that He will use you, and that He will bring you home. Then, when you go, you discover that He is there! And He does all that you thought about and planned, and much more: You are the one who is changed; you are the one who is transformed.

John Piper writes, “Faith has an insatiable appetite for experiencing as much of God’s grace as possible. Therefore, faith presses toward the river where God’s grace flows most freely, the river of love. What other force will move us out of our comfortable living rooms to take upon ourselves the inconveniences and suffering that love requires?”

So, each year I go. I go expecting God to break my heart in a new way. And each year it happens: God breaks my heart anew. But the amazing thing is, my heart is not a shattered mess of a million pieces. No, it is enlarged. The breaking is to enlarge it, allowing it to be bigger, allowing more room to see God and His ways.

And each year, while the breaking of my heart is expected and happens, I have noticed that something else is going on too. The pain that my heart experienced on the first trip, is not the same, it has changed with each trip that I have made. Because I am able to see God at work over time and glimpse a small unfolding of His plan, the pain is more bearable. The eyes of my heart see more clearly what the Lord has done and is doing in the lives of these children in Romania.

“Faith loves to rely on God and see Him work miracles in us. Therefore, faith pushes us into the current where the power of God’s future grace flows most freely — the current of love.” ~John Piper

 

– Shelley Brumfield