Peggy's motherhood story is extraordinary, taking her from the children she loves here at home to the children who hold her heart on another continent - a journey she couldn't have imagined just a few short years ago. A journey expanding like a sunrise. more
My journey here at home is darker, like an eclipse of the sun. It is often inward into my soul and backward in time across the decades of my life, a search for God in the torment inflicted by human brokenness, the pain in my own life and the lives of the women closest to me: the whispered hopes volunteers and the women working in the strip clubs.
As Peggy prepares for her third trip to Liberia I am awed by her strength and her courage.
And I am deeply touched by Jesus words: Daughters ... do not weep for me.
A large number of people followed him, including women
who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them,
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore
and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say
to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them,
“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me;
weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the time will come when you will say,
‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore
and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say
to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
—Luke 23:27-30 NIV
Every morning I wake knowing God is here and there, within the community of Fellowship that connects me with Peggy and in Liberia where she embraces one child, mourns another, and reaches out to help so many more.
Her journey holds a mirror to mine, assuring me that GOD IS HERE today with me, within whispered hopes - and GOD IS THERE in the journey inward and backward into my Wounded Heart - that God holds all daughters and sons as precious, that Jesus is witness and comforter to those who mourn and wail.
Your search for true healing will be a suffering search.
Many tears still need to be shed.
—Henri Nowen, The Inner Voice of Love pg 109
Many tears still need to be shed.
—Henri Nowen, The Inner Voice of Love pg 109
Rw
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