But I had six towels. I also had running water. I had heat when the power was on and a fire in the backyard when it wasn’t. I had extra sheets and strong hands that could rub ointment all over the rashes on those darling children. In addition, I was thankful to be able to help them.
So, instead of having only my seven girls in the house, in addition to Christine and me, we added six more. They were delighted to have warm baths but seemed nervous as I applied the ointment to their peeling skin. For a brief moment, I wondered, What if I catch this disease? What kind of parent am I if I have brought these children willingly into my home and all seven of my girls get scabies? That frightening thought fled quickly as I remembered that Jesus touched lepers and Jesus gave me my assignment in Uganda. He gave me hands that can rub healing balm on children’s wounds. I was simply blessed to be able to use them.
This would be the first of many, many times we would invite disease-ridden, suffering people into our home. It would also be the first of many times that my breath would catch in my throat at the thought of exposing my children to disease. I was always quick to open my home, but a few days after realizing how sick our new friends were or being criticized by other “good” parents, fear would sneak in and I would wonder if I truly was being irresponsible.
The answer always came quickly and simply, “I sent My Son,” the Father would breathe through my spirit. “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake . . .” I realized I still had to be obedient to what God had asked me to do, even though He was expanding my family. I knew the desire to protect my children was God given, but that at the end of each day, this Father who loved them even more than I did would be their protector. Either He would keep them free from all harm or illness or they would get scabies, and we could afford the medicine and God would see us through it.
Over and over again, we have welcomed the sick into our lives—into our homes, to sit with us at our kitchen table, to bathe in our showers, and to sleep in our beds. And each time, disease has touched none of us, people have been healed, God has been glorified, and my family has been tremendously blessed.
Treating the children was time and energy intensive. Bathing and dressing six children’s wounds twice a day seemed like a full-time job. In addition to that, getting clean towels (without a washing machine, which I didn’t have) for twelve baths a day was a chore! More than those challenges, though, was the fact that I needed to keep the infected children far enough from my girls that they would not catch scabies but avoid making our guests feel like outcasts.
We managed. Not only did the children recover, my girls never contracted scabies, nor did I. I struggled to come up with the money to pay for the children’s treatments, pay the people who were helping me, and feed all of us. It was difficult. But it is in the brilliantly, gloriously, wonderfully difficult seasons that God seems to show Himself all-powerful and in control. Seeing six of His children with clean, healthy skin and renewed laughter and energy made all the effort more than worthwhile. This was one of many incidences when the Lord has shown me that the more I give of myself, the more He fills me up. The more I love, the more love I have to give.
God was teaching me the same lessons He desires to teach every single one of His children, He just chose to bring me to Uganda to do it while others can learn right where they are. My life looked different than most because I’d made different choices than most. But making different choices didn’t make me superhuman. In fact, every day was filled with reminders, sometimes painful reminders, of my human emotions, human desires, and human limitations.
I am not one to step back from or fear much, but one situation is always certain to evoke the human emotion of fear in me. It isn’t the rampant disease I encounter multiple times each day or the threat of war in a fragile nation. It is much simpler than that: a rat. One night, I had the very human need to go to the bathroom, but before I could crawl out of bed, I heard the unmistakable sound of little feet scratching around. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear.
Most of the time, I am fearless; I’ve always been that way. But the thought, sound, or sight of a rat just does me in. So I lay there, in the sweltering darkness of my room, unable to get out of bed. I had to ask myself why I was so afraid of a relatively small animal. I’m not sure I ever answered that, but I did begin to think about how often, as human beings, we are crippled by our fears. We are afraid of change, of loss, of being hurt. We cling so tightly to what we have because we are afraid of what would happen if we didn’t have these things anymore.
I remembered a story I once read:
Once there was a people who surveyed the resources of the world and said to each other: “How can we be sure that we will have enough in hard times? We want to survive whatever happens. Let us start collecting food, materials, and knowledge so that we are safe and secure when a crisis occurs.” So they started hoarding, so much and so eagerly that the other peoples protested and said: “You have so much more than you need, while we don’t have enough to survive. Give us part of your wealth!” But the fearful hoarders said: “No, no, we need to keep this in case of an emergency, in case things go bad for us too, in case our lives are threatened.” But the others said: “We are dying now, please give us food and materials and knowledge to survive. We can’t wait . . . we need it now!” Then the fearful hoarders became even more fearful, since they became afraid that the poor and hungry would attack them. So they said to one another: “Let us build walls around our wealth so that no stranger can take it from us.” They started erecting walls so high that they could not even see anymore whether their enemies were outside the walls or not! As their fear increased they told each other: “Our enemies have become so numerous that they may be able to tear down our walls. Our walls are not strong enough to keep them away. We need to put bombs at the top of the walls so that nobody will dare to even come close to us.” But instead of feeling safe and secure behind their armed walls they found themselves trapped in the prison they had built with their own fear. They even became afraid of their own bombs, wondering if they might harm themselves more than their enemy. And gradually they realized their fear of death had brought them closer to it.1
I had recently been back to the States and seen and realized this fear. A very real fear that if we gave everything away, we wouldn’t have enough for ourselves. Back in my new home I saw the consequences: children starving to death, sleeping under rags and in chicken feces, withering away from disease. In our fear, even many of us who claimed to believe in Christ were failing to do what He said for the least of His people.
Fear. It’s part of human nature, but it’s not something we got from God. Second Timothy 1:7 says: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” When I imagine God creating each one of us and planting a purpose deep in our hearts, I never imagine that purpose being mediocrity. While the Bible doesn’t tell every person on earth specifically what his or her life’s calling will be, it does include a lot of general direction:
“You are to find me in the least of these.” Yes.
“You are to leave your earthly possessions and come follow me.” Yes.
“You are to love and serve the Lord God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.” Yes.
“You are to go and make disciples of all nations.” Yes.
“You are to entertain strangers and lepers and tax collectors.” Yes.
“You are to show mercy.” Yes.
“You are to live a life of mediocrity and abundance, holding on tight to your comfortable lifestyle, lest you lose it.” No.
I don’t think so. “Mediocrity and abundance” aren’t there. However, mediocrity and abundance, comfort and ease, do seem to be safe choices for many people, myself included. In stark contrast, leaving our possessions, following Jesus when we don’t have a well-defined plan, and entertaining strangers—well, that does sound a little scary. But what if, just beyond that
risk, just beyond the fear is a life better than anything we have ever imagined: life to the fullest.
I certainly don’t believe everyone should sell all of their belongings and pack a suitcase and move to Africa. I don’t think people all over the planet should drop everything to go somewhere far from everything familiar and be missionaries. In fact, I believe anyone can be a missionary right where they are.
Every day, we have a choice. We can stay nestled in our safe comfortable places, as I did when the rat was in my room. We can let fear of something that really is small compared to the greatness of God cripple us. Or we can take a risk, do something to help someone else, make a person smile, change someone’s world. Life to the fullest exists. It’s available. All we have to do is decide to get up and embrace it.
I don’t always want to help other people. Generally speaking, I do. But there are certain days when I, like everyone else in the world, simply want to do what I need to do and keep moving. It’s part of being human. But so often, when we stop to be kind when we don’t really want to, that’s when the sacrifice becomes most rewarding.
The night in 2007 was cold and rainy. I was walking out of the supermarket on Main Street in downtown Jinja, on my way home. Then I saw him. Huddled on the street corner, drenched and shivering, was a little boy. At that moment, all I really wanted to think about was getting home, getting dry, and crawling into my warm bed. But a voice inside told me to stop.
I took the little boy inside the supermarket to dry him off a bit and bought him some biscuits and juice. I gave him my sweatshirt, a small wooden cross I carried in my pocket, and some change so he could get a ride home.
As he left, he called out, “What is your name?”
“Katie,” I responded, “Auntie Katie.”
“Me, I am Daniel,” he shouted and disappeared into the wet, chilly night.
About a year later, I walked into the supermarket to buy food for my family and got caught in a big hug. Two small brown arms wrapped around me as a child’s voice excitedly proclaimed, “Auntie Katie!”
I looked down to see Daniel. Beaming.
“Wait,” he urged me.
He hurried to the nearest street vendor and bought me a popsicle with the little pocket change he had. He then dug his little hand in his pocket and pulled out the small wooden cross. Looking at me with a wide grin, he spoke words that pierced my heart: “I have never stopped praying for you every day.”
To this day, I think of that story and stand amazed at the goodness of our God and the enormous things He can accomplish if I am obedient to His command to stop and love the person in front of me. That rainy night, I really just wanted to hop on a piki and go home. But I stopped, because that’s what my heart told me to do. I only gave him a sweatshirt (I’m sure I have eight more). I only gave him some cheap biscuits (I can eat biscuits anytime I want to). I only gave him enough money for his ride home (probably less than the equivalent of fifty cents). But Jesus gave him hope that night. And he remembered. He didn’t just remember my face; he remembered my name. He prayed for me. He prayed for my safety and for the opportunity to see me again. I blessed him just one cold night, and he blessed me every day after that for an entire year.
ONE DAY . . .
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Hello from the world of scabies, babies, and much, much laughter!
Our treatment of the “scabies family,” as we now endearingly call them at my house, is going along quite nicely. Actually, we have added two more to the bunch. Upon going to the children’s house the other day to let their Auntie know that they will be staying with us for a while we found that baby Cyrus and older sister Falida were also infested with the little bugs. The baby has the worst case by far. So of course, they have also moved in with us. That makes fifteen children in my house. The children with scabies have to be bathed twice a day, my children have to be bathed once a day, everyone has to eat three times a day—that is twenty_three baths and forty–five meals not including me or those who help around the house. It is, without a doubt, a lot of work. But we rejoice in knowing that it is God’s work, that in bathing and clothing and serving these children, we are truly being the hands and feet of Jesus.
Yesterday I took Christine with me to “de-scabie” the scabies family’s house. In their small mud hut, the children sleep on an old, rotting cardboard box, packed together under piles of old dirty clothes and rags, like rats. A pet chicken walks in and out of the bedroom freely, defecating wherever she wants to. No animal should ever have to live in such a filthy condition, not to mention a human being.
I knelt and began to pick through the grubby clothes, wipe away feces and maggots, and deal with everything else in the house. Everything had to be burned, because once scabies burrow into clothing and blankets and things of that sort, they are impossible to get out. It was, of course, a very sensitive ordeal: How would you like someone coming into your closet and telling you they needed to burn everything you owned? After clearing pretty much everything out of the house and into the backyard, I lit the pile. As the flames engulfed all of the belongings this family had, I could hear the Lord saying, “I make all things new.”
We scrubbed the little house with bleach and then filled it inside with the new things we had brought: straw mats to replace the cardboard they had slept on. Sheets and blankets to replace the clothes they had burrowed under. A new outfit for each of the members of the family, Auntie and Grandma included. We washed all the dishes with soap that we had given them and left our basins for washing. When Auntie and Grandma finally came back into their home, it was a new place. It actually looked cozy. Their eyes shone with tears. For just that look, just that expression of thankfulness, I would do it again. I would treat scabies and burn clothes and get covered in poop and mud and maggots every single day just to see Jesus in that old grandmother’s face. I would.
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EVERYTHING I NEED
My life became a balancing act. On one side, I was running a small nonprofit organization and needed amounts of money that seemed unfathomable to me. On the other side, I was learning how to be a real mother, even if my motherhood was unconventional. Both aspects were testing and growing my faith in marvelous ways, as I learned to trust God to provide material needs as well as wisdom and courage to parent the precious lives with which He had entrusted me.
I reveled in the opportunities to wipe dirty faces, paint small fingernails, and make balls out of socks so the girls would have something to play with. I didn’t feel my life as a mother was much different from the lives of mothers everywhere, except that I prepared eighteen pieces of toast every morning, had seven people splashing me during bath time, and got covered with about 140 good-night kisses at the end of every day.
The seven girls who had become my family had been through so much in their young lives. I wanted to give them the world. But sometimes, when they looked at me with big, curious, expectant eyes, I wondered, What if I can’t? If being a new mother taught me anything, it was just how inadequate I truly am and just how dependent I am on my Father to give me the strength and grace for each day.
We were, in every way, a normal family, imperfect but perfectly knit together by our Creator. Sometimes my children were late to school because I lit the toast on fire, other days they simply stayed home from school because Mom wanted to play! Sometimes we ran out of food and ate pancakes for dinner. Some days there seemed to be so many people in my house screaming and coloring on the walls and riding the dogs as though they were little horses that I felt I might just collapse. And still, in all my imperfection, their hopeful eyes would look up at me with such love and faith that I could answer their every question.
“Mommy, where does the sun go when I am sleeping?”
“Mommy, are all ladybugs girls?”
“Mommy, where do I go when I die? Do fish go there too?”
“Well, why don’t fish breathe air?”
“Mommy, what makes the sky blue?”
“
Mommy, why aren’t you bald like me?”
“Mommy, why is your skin different from mine?”
Mommy, Mommy, Mommy . . .
One of the questions that surprised me most was this: “Mommy, if Jesus comes to live inside my heart, will I explode?”
“No!” I proclaimed as the children and I headed to the Nile River for a few of them to be baptized that day.
Then I thought about the question a bit more.
“Yes, if Jesus comes to live in your heart, you will explode.” That is exactly what we should do if Jesus comes to live inside our hearts. We will explode with love, with compassion, with hurt for those who are hurting, and with joy for those who rejoice. We will explode with a desire to be more, to be better, to be close to the One who made us.
Their beautiful, dependent spirits and their never-ending list of questions reminded me of how inadequate I really was, and reminded me that I was to mirror this dependence and awe in my relationship with the Father. He was, He is everything I need.
Sometimes I sing. Sometimes I dance. Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I cry. And sometimes, I can’t explain why I do what I do, except to say that the grace and goodness of God are so big that I can’t contain them and the passion overflows. So I told my daughters that day, “Yes, my little ones. Jesus is coming to live inside your heart. Get ready to explode.”
I made peace with feeling inadequate because the truth is, I was. I still am; we all are. I quickly became okay with being imperfect. Throughout the Bible, God chose seemingly inadequate people to do His work. Look at Mary, the mother of Christ. She probably wasn’t much older, and was perhaps even younger than I, when she became a mother. I’m sure she was no more ready than I was to answer a high-pitched voice when asked all sorts of questions to which she didn’t know the answers. But God had called her to parent, and so she did.
Kisses From Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption Page 10
