She just turned 24 this month. A few months ago she lost her job, lost a place to live, and now can't provide for her daughter, Stesse, who is now living with other family.
She is one of my very best friends.
Close to every week, I go with her to visit her daughter. Every week I watch them together. Every week I watch her bring Stesse what she scrounges to find. I watch her bathe her. I watch her feed her, and hold her, and look at her.
I watch her love her.
As I watch them together, I imagine the way she looks at her daughter when she has to say goodbye- say goodbye to the baby she can't take with her. I imagine it, and then I watch it. I watch her say goodbye.
And then we leave and jump on a tap-tap back to Delmas. I squeeze her tightly, and she walks away, while I ransack my my mind for the answers and call upon my God for his promises, trying to trust in who He is, and in what He does.
What is it to trust Him?
Ever since I boarded that plane back to Haiti, I have been asking myself that question. Asking myself how I can continue to trust Him above all other things...as my contacts build, as my knowledge grows, as he instills more relationships into my life. Things that all seduce my trust to other sources. How do I keep my trust in Him and not in man, or myself, or in resources?
"I'm just trusting God with this" a lot of times sounds so hopeful, like people are just hoping on God, but aren't actually trusting Him. Hope that's not assured at all.
I feel like trust is this thing that Christian circles tend to throw out there when they are out of options, when it's their last resort.
I started asking Jesus to teach me. To teach me how to trust Him undoubtedly, to have my trust lie in Him before and above all else, and to teach me how to trust Him, even in my untrust.
And He has.
Gently. Fixedly. Surely.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16
He's changing my mind. Changing how I think, how I see and look at things, how I make decisions, why I make choices. He is taking over my mind. And it is absolutely terrifying.
Sometimes I feel like he sits beside me, baffled along with me, as we watch as I wrestle to give Him control over my mind. It's like he asks in a whisper, "Why are you so afraid to give up your mind, when you have let me come in and take control over your whole heart?" I have heard a lot about Jesus renewing your mind, and have been reminded of that verse we all know that coincides with it in Romans. I have felt Jesus renew my mind over the years, have experienced Him changing how I see things and think through things.
But never has it been like this.
I feel as if my arms are high above me, clinging to nothing but the One above me- watching from the back of my mind as He thinks for me in the front, watching, wincing, and saying, "okay", as he chooses for me.
Turn down the things that would make you trust in them instead of me. He says that to me, and everything about a single day will change. And suddenly Im turning down job offers, and things that make perfect sense, and am making choices that I know will lead to sickness, heartache, and trouble.
Jesus was being Jesus, and was preaching and healing and doing superhuman things, so much that the crowds were almost crushing him in the attempt just to touch his robes. There wasn't even space for him to eat. They kept following him and following him, and when his family heard of it, they went out to seize him, saying, "He is out of his mind!"
Jesus has made me into a fool. He continues to strip me of the things I take pride and solace in. There are times when I don't feel smart, or healthy, or beautiful. I think of Jesus, naked, exposed, and shamed on the cross, and begin to start accepting those parts of life that I have agreed to by choosing to follow Him- accepting those moments when people tell me that, "I am out of my mind." When I feel embarrassed over sickness, when I feel shame for choosing what looks like the uneducated and naive decision, when I feel hurt when someone rebukes me for getting myself into messy situations.
I forget to laugh along with the life Jesus dreams out for me- one where I can laugh with him, as rats fall out of trees next to me, and red ants invade all of my prized nutella.It is overpowering not knowing what to do when your friend misses her baby, or you find out she's on the street, and it is exhausting to leave the kids after weekends or days spent with them, and your heart is ripped from its place over and over again.
I memorized every curve and feature of her face, and said to her, "I love you, do you know that?"
She smiles at me, and says, "Wi (yes)."
"Jesus loves you, do you know that?"
"Wi!"
"Do you love him?"
"Wi!"
"Why?" I ask her.
She looks at me, and grins her huge grin, "Paske li zanmi m'!" (because he's my friend!)
Moments like those are worth it all, and are when I learn much about Jesus, by learning who He is to another human being. And to my little three-year old in the orphanage, He is someone who loves her and is her friend.
He is a friend to Tanya.
And if that isn't enough reason to trust Him with not only my heart, but also my mind, then I don't know what is.
