the LOVE

She was crying, and I was there. I opened my arms to her, but she didn't come. I went to her, picked her up, turned her around and sat her in my lap. I rocked her back and forth while I sang to her softly. The Love...the LOVE. Ohh...it was deep.

My heart was saying,

"I know...I know, child. I see you. You're a mess. You're a mess and you'll be a mess for a while. You've been wounded. But listen...do you hear it? Oh, child, you can rest in my arms. Love is here. I know you are afraid, but child, listen to me sing to you. Find comfort in the rhythm of love that is swaying you back and forth. Into your brokenness I AM COMING with all of my love because this love alters brokenness into wholeness. Sit here in this embrace, BEHOLD the love that surrounds you now, and just listen while I sing over you. Listen...rest...and stay. You cry now, but you will sing. Your legs are frail now, but they will dance. Come. Come and receive this living, healing water. The One who gives does not hold back. He too knows brokenness, because He was broken for us. Be still and hear that love swirling all around you. It is never not here."

"No dark can consume light; no death greater than this life. We are not forgotten. Hope is found when we say: I believe in sun even when it's not shining. I believe in love even when I don't feel it. And I believe in God even when He is silent. I believe, I believe..."

But if we love...

*Pictures will be added soon.

She's as gorgeous as gorgeous comes with her almond eyes and glowing smile. You would never know the suffering she has endured or how persistent sickness has been throughout her short life.

Her mother: murdered.
Her father: left.
Her extended family: abandoned her because she is a girl.
Before she was one: she lived on the streets of a slum.
Sickness: parasites in her brain resulting in seizures as contracted through the slum water she drank.

Her name: "Light."

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

It's true. It's really, really true.

There are forces that do not want that child alive. But greater forces, namely, Jesus, have another idea in mind.

He is Healer, and He is healing her.
He is Abba, and He has adopted her.
He is love, and He loves her.
He is Emmanuel, and He is with her.

When I think of her, two words come to mind:

Sloppy. Love.

When the younger children cry, she runs toward the crying. Even if they are in another part of the house. I don't know any other 5-year-olds like that.

When she comes up to me, she leans on me in such a way that if I move, she will lose her balance and fall. She leans all of herself on me, and on anyone who will let her. It's one of the many ways she exchanges love.

When I am not expecting it, she will say, "Auntie, I am liking you so much," or, "Auntie, I am thanking for you so much."

Note: Her words to me say far more about her than about me.

One day, she followed me up to the roof, took my hand in hers and said so maturely, "Auntie, thank you for your help to me." In disbelief and choked back tears I said to her, "Jyoti, how am I helping you?"


"You are giving work."

She understands that my being there is meant as love for her. She gets it...that check cleared.

Another interaction with her is always at the forefront of my memory. It was early morning, and we were just sitting together. She was sitting -- leaning back -- in my lap as I swayed her back and forth to the rhythm that Love was beating in me.

Later that day that memory was rewritten in my mind. Instead of seeing me holding her, I saw Jesus holding me as I leaned into His love and shared it with the one in my arms.

When I held her, He held me. I held her because He holds me. I held her as if I were holding Him -- loving her as I love Him, because He loves me and has given me the Spirit who readily loves.

From Him and to Him and through Him are all things.

From Him: "We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

To Him: "Whatever you do to the least of these brothers of Mine, you do to Me." Matthew 25:40

Through Him: "We have come to know and rely on [believe] the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." 1 John 4:16

"No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God's love abides in us, and is perfected in us."
1 John 4:12

It looked like Jesus loving Jesus through Jesus. And it was beautiful.

Two Masters

They wander around looking for someone to beg. They've studied people; they easily judge who has the most wealth and they make a beeline for those with light skin. Persistence. Their entire life involves looking as pitiful as possible -- whether by their choice or someone else's. Sometimes their fingers, arms or legs are cut off to provoke more pity, and hopefully money, from people.

When I see them I am filled with rage. Holy rage. Not at them, but at their master. Not a human, but a spirit of poverty. Slavery. I rage against the thing that has so many convinced that they have to beg just right or look desperate enough to get attention from people.

But sometimes, I think just like them.

And that thing, that dark master is found all over the world. I have seen it in India. I have seen it in the States -- in churches. I have seen it in the Middle East, in Africa, in Europe, and in Mexico. And though it is very visible here, it is much deeper than that and goes far beyond a haggard and beautiful hand reaching out for a coin. But they need something they didn't know they could ask for. And did I mention that some people don't even have hands to beg with?

What master is this? It is the master that says, "You're unwanted. Get out of here. You're a burden. No one really loves you. There's not enough room for you. Don't even bother speaking, because no one will want to listen. You're hideous. You're not worth showing yourself to anyone. No one would even enjoy the real you. Stop dreaming and stop your hoping for love. It's preposterous."

I am appalled by how common it is for people to form their lives and beliefs around these things.

But grace is in the business of undoing...so consider me undone. And there is more.

The master of grace, who is full of truth, says this, "You are always welcome and always wanted. Be at home. You don't have to beg; just receive. You are worth enough to be seen and being seen does not deter love from you. Rest. You don't have to work for what can't be earned. Everything is paid for; just enjoy."

I have never been more aware of His grace than I have been the past few months. It's not because it wasn't there before, but because He made me aware of it...and it's honestly changed everything. It's not rarely given; only rarely received. And even being able to receive it is a gift. So it's all-around marvelous and baffling because Jesus chose to bring Himself glory by bringing us joy at a greusome cost that He absolutely did not have to go through...and now we desire what He desires because He changed us so that He could share His joy with us even though we all might as well have been the ones who drove the nails into his hands.

It's just good news, people.

It's the thing that changed everything for me.

In the words of a friend of mine, "Let us trust in Him, because when we trust Him we receive His love and when we receive His love then we can rest. Know that He wants us to rest in Him."

I hesitate to post this as-is because there is so much more.

To be continued,
A heart captured by grace

Royalty

My Saniya,

You remind me of a queen. Beauty flows from you as Light adorns you. Love fills your heart and overflows. You are such a treasure. Whatever joy is in the air is multiplied when you are around.

You are an old soul. I love how obsessed you are with Jesus. When so many other six year olds fall falsely in love with celebrities and fictional characters, you have made Jesus your hero. I still love to remember the day when you tied a cape around you in a super-hero-like manner and went around "healing" the boys who were playing dead with David Uncle. Laura Auntie asked if you were a doctor. But you said, "No! Jesus Christ!"

I savored every moment and cherish every memory with you -- just because you are who you are. I especially loved lying next to you on the middle bunk as you told me stories about Jesus when you were supposed to be sleeping instead. You understand things. You told me in excellent English -- which is your second or third language -- how He was beaten and killed because we do bad things. You demonstrated the evil one with two fingers and said, "This one...don't say his name, it's not good name..." Your face lit up and your voice changed when you said, "Auntie, after three days -- Jesus wake up-ing!" You kept interrupting yourself to say, "Auntie, this is such good story...beautiful, beautiful story."

I never knew whether to laugh with delight or cry tears of joy when I was around you. Something about you reaches to the deepest part of my heart and awakens it, frees it, to come out and play in the Light. You are beautiful in every way and you beautify the world around you just by existing.

And child, those eyes...they shine. You love. I have learned much from you and your freedom from self-concern. You are genuinely one of the funniest people I know: Saniya Kangaroo.

I love hiding behind the church room door with you -- or from you. I love that you let me hold you, spin you around, and hang you upside down by your ankles while you shower the room with laughter. It amazes me how you love me -- which says far more about you than me.

I will never forget the day during lunch when I asked what you want to do when you become older. "Nurse? Teacher?" I asked. "Mother," you replied. And it made my heart sing.

My prayers for you are often and my thoughts of you are sweet. May nothing hinder you from telling everyone about your Hero. May shame or fear never come upon you. Live joyfully as His precious daugher, knowing that you are always welcome and always wanted in His presence, which is always with you. Thank you for being a beautiful example of living fully in freedom. You taught me well. I love you, my daughter.

Sonship

My Shanu,

You are wonderful.

You stole my heart when I first saw you dance. I love that you dance so freely, yet subtly, for no one's entertainment but your own. I love your heart. It was evident today when Sonu grabbed the large piece of styrofoam from your hands and broke it into two pieces for his own benefit. Your face showed no sign of anger.

It was as if you had not been wronged.

And you were so humbly sweeping the dust in the kitchen. Most eight year old boys I know would complain about that. But not you.

I love being around you, sitting with you, calling your name and getting a dance in response. Your heart is beautiful. Simple. Loving. You are so playful but you are not naughty -- which is a rare thing to come by.

I am sitting in the church room with all the other children during study time. I keep stopping this letter to look up at you. You are such a handsome young man.

I especially love the way you eat -- with your head back and only your thumb and forefinger touching your food while the rest of your fingers curl loosely.

I love your voice. I can pick it out of a crowd of voices. Even your slight lisp is endearing and makes my heart happy. Your smile is like sunshine.

When I think about your future, I am filled with hope. I imagine you leading and caring for others, and it makes my heart swell with love and joy. You are precious. A gem. You are quiet, but you are noticed. By me, by Sir and Ma'am, and by our Love Jesus Christ.

I love how you pray for your father, who chose not to care for you and who continually threatens your sisters some nights in his drunkenness. "Pray for my dad; he needs a belt," will always sing grace to my ears.

May your life be filled with the love that has always surrounded you. Live freely, my son, and fear nothing. Rejoice, because Jesus defeated your worst enemy.

I could never forget you. I will miss being in your presence and I will pray for you every day. I love you with all my heart. Thank you for loving me too.

Love,
Chorta Auntie

Frayed Fringes

It's been a while.

There is more to convey than I have words for. Since I am momentarily at a loss for words, I will copy some here from an email that I sent to my best friend a few days ago:

So much to write you about...so much that I don't know how to process or if I'm meant to.

Inhale.

Exhale.

First, I am so thankful for Jules. I love that Jesus put her and i together here. So many times she and i have wandered off or lagged behind just to sit and BE with the people who beg.

Whenever I feel like "just being" isn't good enough, I hear Him say, "I AM."

Today -- oh the things that happened today...I saw an old man with no shirt and massive bubbles of his own skin all over his body. I have never seen anything like it. Jules and I saw him yesterday and our world was rocked just to look into his eyes. We stopped, stooped down on the ground to be on his level (although we already were due to our humanity) and hold his hand and kiss his head and call him our friend and throw in Jesus' name. Today we came close to where he was sitting and she asked me to come with her to go sit with him again while the other three went on an ATM adventure.

We walked up to him and asked him his name again. (We did that yesterday too, i forgot to mention.) I really, really wish I could remember. It was three syllables and there was an M. He was so beautiful that you would have cried. Julia did. And you know how I am. Which means I didn't cry but would have if i were the crying kind.

We bent low and held his hands and just existed with him. Jules said a lot of words, and I said a few...most of what I said was just His name. I was so happy and filled with joy to be sitting with him.

Someone came up to us and said, "Ma'am, I want to tell you that this man has a skin disease that you will get if you touch him."

Julia's eyes were already full of tears -- not pitying the man on the ground, but LOVING him and BEING with him in his suffering and sitting with him and carrying buckets full of love to the places of abandon and shame and disgrace that have made their own claims on his life...and dumping those buckets on him in a mess of beauty and justice.

She spoke back to the man immediately with the same tears of love, "It is okay because my God is big and my God is Jesus Christ. It is already done; I have already touched him and I will not leave because he is my friend."

She then took the scarf from her neck and adorned him with it. We noticed then that a HUGE crowd had drawn and encircled us. I didn't look long enough to read the expressions on their faces. But i did hear mocking laughter. A sikh man came up to our friend and said things to him in a way that put a bad taste in my mouth. But i smiled at him too. And again i told the man on the ground that he is my friend.

A police man came with his big stick and started swatting it to disperse the crowd...but it grew. Laura, David and Sarah came and had to shove themselves through. We didn't hear until later how angry they were at the looks on people's faces who were watching us. I asked Him yesterday to only let me see what He wanted me to see...which is the same thing Rachel prayed when she was in Mumbai...and she didn't notice the men who stare all the time.

Which is HARD to miss. But Jesus. :)

Ohh Jesus...

Three years ago i remember believing that He is the God of the oppressed...but at the time it was hard for me to believe that He is also the God of the oppressor.

Something He did in me a while ago (I think it was the summer of '09) was show me His tenderness for those who oppress. Today He put words to it. Here are some of them:

"TRULY the oppressor oppresses for lack of trust in You. TRULY whatever isn't done in faith is sin. The one who steals does so because he does not trust Your loving provision. The one who lusts does so because he does not trust God to be his delight. The one who lies does so for the same reason the Israelites provoked You in the desert -- they did not trust the truth of Your love for them."

He is coupling that ^ with so much tenderness and compassion. And compassion is not a haze of pity that makes those who are wrong appear to be right. Compassion sees clearly but embraces anyway.

Jesus, yeah?

I have never spoken with so much momma bear syndrome as I did tonight. There was a boy with no shirt and no shoes, dirty as dirty comes and sporting a fresh wound on his left cheek. His eyes were not white anymore and there was a scar on his head where some gash was before. He was probably 12.

I saw desperation and thirst in his eyes.

The momma bear came out when i went to buy him food from a street vendor. I asked with a boldness so bold that it may have seemed harsh, but it was the, "You better listen to me because what I'm saying is important" kind of boldness. Authority. (I just realized that the word "author" is in authority.)

I said to the vendor, "Are you here every day?"

"Yes, yes madam."

"Do you see this boy every day?"

"Yes madam."

"You listen to me, bhaiya (brother) -- you take this money and you feed this boy tomorrow when you see him. Tk?" (tk = ok in Hindi.)

I gave him double the cost of the food i bought for the boy. I pray he actually feeds him tomorrow. Trust is really all i've got there...trust for God's goodness to override man's corruption.

It's just 200 rupees. And he's hungry.

Jules and I were approached by a family with no father and they asked us to buy them rice. We did. We just didn't realize that rice was going to cost $45 USD. They bought so much. The thoughts I hate but don't know how to ignore were swarming in my head:

"Do they have a pimp? Is he going to beat them for this? Will he let them eat it? Are they taking advantage of us? What's wrong with that anyway? Who will feed them tomorrow? Why didn't I go to the ATM this morning? What's that smell?"

But He hushed me with His soothing voice and said, "Do it in love, Brittany, only do it in love." Love makes it worth it. It simplifies everything. Doing it in love, doing it for the moment -- but not the eternal-less moment. The "I AM" is Love. He IS Love. Is...present tense. Present love. Presence. of love. Ah.

And then there was the 15-year-old beauty whose face was marred by fire seven years ago when her house burnt down and she lost everything -- including her parents. Her name is Pooja, which means "worship."

She asked if Julia and i are sisters and then she said, "I think you are sisters because you have the same look in both of your eyes and it is very beautiful."

A Dream and Its Fruit

I had a dream that on my wall was a living mural -- moving images of mighty hands holding back the waters of the Jordan, a shepherd boy becoming a king, a pregnant virgin, tongues of fire, and multitudes of souls hailing the worthy Lamb.

Etched across the scene were four words:

"Do you doubt Me?"

Ravenous

There is a major difference between the children who have been satisfied by His love and those who haven't.

The ones who have are content, and love flows from them.

The ones who haven't are ravenous, and they devour one another for the slightest bit of loving attention.

One example of this happened yesterday at a leper colony in a busy section of Delhi.

I walked in with four of my friends and was swooned away by three or four girls to the very back of the colony. Christ in me was shining and I knew it.

I would be foolish to not say that the only reason they run to me as they do is because of Christ in me. Didn't He say to let the children come? And come they do! I refuse to believe that it is because I have light skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, or because I "have a way" with kids...which is always relatively determined. It's just Jesus. They see something in Him that makes them come running. They know they are safe with Him.

I also would like to mention that the children here -- especially the begging ones -- are often yelled at and considered a nuisance to society. I imagine that it may have been the same when He told His disciples to just let them come.

Anyway -- there I was, in the middle of bustling Delhi at the back of a leper colony. Men worked the dusty ground behind us. A train passed not many yards away. The highway nearby was easily seen and very easily heard. The sun shone from the Brittany-blue sky and puffy white clouds made my heart happy. I was the only white person in sight, and I really loved that. What I didn't love was how the girls (the number had grown to 7 at this point) hit each other with all their might and pushed each other out of the way to have my full attention.

Their hearts are ravenous for love. They want what I have. I want them to have what I have. So much. It would change everything for them.

They wanted to dance. I showed them some dances and they returned the favor. I ballroom danced with some of them, spinning them around and enjoying the sight of their smile.

One of the girls kept stopping to hold her temples. Her face was etched with pain. I got eye-level with her and prayed for her on my knees while the world zoomed around us and the wind blew our hair. I prayed for her heart to be filled with His love. I prayed in Jesus' name for her pain to cease.

And I prayed for them to slap me instead of each other, just so I could kiss them back. Such love He has shown me.

It didn't happen, but I kissed them anyway.

We spun around -- the kind of spinning where you are facing each other, all four hands locked into a grip that is trusted to keep one or the other from flinging out of the force that intensifies as the spinning gets faster. (I love doing that.)

They made my chunni into a small sari and pulled me ruthlessly in all directions, sometimes simultaneously. They taught me Hindi phrases and I still have no idea what I repeated back to them. I smiled deep into them all and kissed their hands after they used them to hit each other. I prayed and prayed and prayed as I let them take me where they would, and I never knew which way to choose when I was being pulled in two or three different directions. I just wanted them.

I put one girl's hair up with the elastic band on my wrist. I imagined her being adorned with His righteousness and told her in Hindi that she is so beautiful.

There was a woman with leprosy sitting on a ledge nearby. I greeter her and held her hand for a while, smiling into her soul with His love and power. I kissed her head and hands and just sat in silence with her while the girls had stopped tugging on me. When they began again, I kissed her again, and let them lead me wherever they wished.

I was beaming with a smile the whole time. Just resting. Just being. Just letting Him love me and love them. Enjoying His restorative, gracious Self.

I adore Jesus so much. I saw Him in their eyes, staring back at me.

There is nothing like that.