Mary's Story

You may have thought that I wouldn't post about Africa again, but today I will. This post has been in my mind for awhile, but I just haven't been able to write about it yet.

Meet Mary...16 year old Zambian. (She's on the left in the white shirt)




On Monday morning at Camp Life, they divide the kids according to school and ages into groups. I had mostly 11-14 year old girls. One of the counselors from last year wanted several girls from my group because they were in her group last year....no problem. So they did a swap. They took a couple of my girls and then said "Mary, this is Auntie Alicia". Mary was very quiet and 16 years old...the oldest in the group.

She didn't seem very interested most of the week and I really thought, "I'm not getting through to her. She's sad that these girls are all younger than her and not in her class. This really isn't fair. And so on..." Then, on Thursday, we went into the village with the Evangecube. Mary became a leader and a star. She grabbed that evangecube and started sharing with almost every adult we met. I was impressed.

When I had my one on one time with Mary, she said everything was fine at home. Maybe it is, but you just never know. Some of these kids have such horrible stories that when someone says everything is okay, you kind of wonder. On Friday after lunch we were singing as a small group (we were very close to saying our good-byes) and Mary wasn't singing. My initial thought was just to leave her alone. If she was going to be a stick-in-the-mud, well that's hard to change. But with the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I walked over to her, away from the girls that were hugging me while we sang, and went and put my arm around Mary.

She started weeping, not crying, but weeping. She wept on my shoulder for almost 10 minutes. What did I do? I cried with her and held her. There were no words that would make things better. My heart softened incredibly to Mary that day. I don't know why she wept...was her home life that bad? was she sad I was leaving? I really didn't know and I didn't feel like I was supposed to ask. My white t-shirt didn't come clean. There is Zambia dirt and tear stains on that shirt. I washed it twice and then decided, the dirt could stay. It could be a reminder to me that wounds run deep, even when we try to put on the smile or put up the wall and pretend that all is okay. Sometimes we need to talk things through, sometimes we just need someone to hold us or sit with us while we cry. The verse in Romans 12 "weep with those who weep" came alive that day. There was nothing else to do, but weep.

I love this quote from Kay Warren's book Dangerous Surrender
"But by holding her in my arms, wiping the tears from her face, looking deep into her eyes, crying with her, and speaking of Jesus' unquenchable love for her, Jesus became real and visible. I made him real to her by being his hands and feet, by acting the way he acts, by loving the way he loves, by showing mercy and compassion, by giving the very best I had--Jesus Chrsit in me."

I hope that's what I did in Zambia and I hope I do that in my day to day life here in Tennessee as well.

So many are hurting. Life is hard, but God is good.