Daring to Love and Live?

I was hiding. Curling up in my own, “I have done enough”.

The face of the little one in Dominican. Her mom gone. The village whipping her with sticks, labeling her with words that scar in places human eyes can’t see….“dog”, “fatso”, “worthless”.  Thoughts swirling around in me…in corners unchained…

Camping on the reality of life being…Just.  Too. Much.  Pain.

See, I had resurrected this theory.  “Hide under a bowl.  Hope the walls you have created will keep you safe from the world.”

Because I thought….Don’t risk, don’t feel, don’t think….Somehow equals happiness.

But the pains of this life can find you…whether on a rooftop, in your house, or hidden under a bushel…quietly hiding from difficulties like little girls who need mamas…

But have none.

Still, it had been a year long that I had seen another strange girl constantly in my dreams. The china-eyed one I thought God would reveal when I traveled to China, for a third time.

But how many of you know that often we can interpret dreams different from how God intended.  And although He gives vision so we don’t perish….we must lay that vision back at the feet of the Father.  For Him to interpret…..

In His time. In His way.

I felt His grace thick the first time she came.  Then, they took her.  She wept, arms reaching for me, as if screaming for something she was missing in her world of neglect…

Still, they stuffed her in a car and took her away. 

Three weeks later.  A “mom” hunt resulted in them finding her again.  There she sat screaming…still in the filthy pajamas I gave her weeks earlier.  It was 2:22 on a Saturday.

And yet, the wounds of other children brought hesitation, whispering doubts and lies where tiredness and weariness coddles regret…That place where the enemy wants us to camp.  Paralyzed.  Impoverished. Fearful.

But, somehow grace falls on our doubts when we least expect it.  And hope lurked deep in the broken-heartedness while so many kids are found coming, going.  It was in this life-time of loss that I realized I had no key of prediction…no hope of understanding….

Yet, still somehow I experienced…it is here, in our smallness….He shines brightest.

And it is then, I find.  This wrestling to grip and cleave.  These attachment issues I have been struggling with for two months with this little one….isn’t just hers….They are here.  In me.

And yet, in this pain of someone else’s weary, where we are small, insignificant, incapable of saving another who so desperately needs healing…

We find a hope, a peace, a knowing that the ones we reach to are often the reflection of our own insecurities…

For how many times have I been the rejecting?  The abandoned one?  The aching infant….needing some safety…but finding none?

I hold her.  Rock.  Risking her hitting, fighting, kicking from my arms.

And yet, it is in this need to show patient, calm, unconditional love…that is where I find HIM….the God of our redemption, most of all.  I find a God who holds each of us…when we question who next might abandon us.  When we have watched Him ask for idols, one by one.  And like Abraham we have lain them at the alter;  called to trust, though we may only see a portion of His eternal picture.

And yet, she sits.  Here in my arms.  This gift.  After a lifetime of embracing the rejection and being the rejected one.  This little one still.  Resting.  Home….

Two broken ones mending, in the clef of The Rock, of The One who is much bigger than all of us….

And this love.  This love that reaches.  Wants.  Comes out from the hiding.  This light-under-a-bushel, placed high on a lampstand for the world to witness….

Love outweighs rejections….Every time.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t know if they will call me tomorrow and say they are taking her back to the isolated home she came from….like they did many months ago…

But I do know….Love is always…yes, ALWAYS worth fighting for.  This holding on, planting ourselves like a city on a hill, shining His goodness for the world to hold onto….IS the gospel lived out like the crucifix He died upon….

This holding onto nothing…is the fullness of His glory.  Leaving us caught in His very breathe…wanting only Him as our portion both now and forever.

So, I ask you today friends….

Will come on this, daring-to-love, daring-to-risk, daring-to-stretch ourself farther than even your vision can take you, journey?  Will you lay every idol, give up every fear, walk into un-charted territory?

#Risk Rejection was a challenge given to us by Amy Sullivan.  A teacher.  A mom.  A daring sister calling the world to more faith, more love, living boldly in a world that seeks to silence, blind, and terrify us from moving forward.  

Want to read more about Risk Rejection?  Pop on over to Amy’s place HERE. 

(Linking with Lyli)