Beyond My Own Heart

Our conversation, among friends new and old, turned to Africa last night. This is not completely uncommon, as a few of us have spent even the briefest of time there. But it always catches my heart when we do. Even for the countries and the peoples I have not visited, itreaches out, and last night it longed to do so as the story of a young Sudanese woman's life was told...

Sold at the age of fourteen for a sum of $5,000 to a Sudanese man more than twice here age living here in America, the young woman was uprooted from her life in southern Sudan, though it may have been tumultuous at best, and exported to Las Vegas like some good to be traded and not a human being with will and desire of her own. Then, forced to marry this man, she became pregnant with her first child and endured the physical and emotional abuse of a person who cared little for her well-being and only that he "made good" on his purchase. So, when she escaped from him at the hands of a compassionate clinic worker (who mended her bruised and broken body), he went straight to her family in Sudan asking for his "refund". They had spent their money, and he had them imprisoned. Simple as that.

The young woman, after taking some comfort in a shelter for battered women in Las Vegas, met and was taken in by a family from a church nearby to the clinic. Soon, she took a job and worked off that $5,000 debt so that her family would be let out of jail and set free. But freedom is still something this young woman has not known.

Unfortunately, while still in Las Vegas, she walked into yet another damaging relationship, this time by her own will, that resulted in another child and far too many bruises that one should endure. She escaped again, fleeing to Gallatin, Tennessee where some cousins of hers live. Once here, she found a job only to be laid off in a period of months and lived out of her car with a young boy at her hip. After finding an ESL class hosted at a local church, she was noticed and taken in by yet another loving family who to this day seeks to help mend the pieces of her broken life. Her first child still remains in the care of her ex-husband, or owner, I should say. Because of some unjust ruling, she is required to make child support payments to this man and works long hours at a local resort, famous for hiring people of varying nationalities, to do so. And she lives here, resenting the decisions that everyone else has made along with her own that have put her at the mercy of the kindness of strangers

And that's her story. One of so many which tell of peoples struggles, both within their homelands and within their hearts to find a better life and to live free. Some prevail, and others find themselves stumbling over roadblocks from their past and a denial of the worth that is theirs from their very inception.

My heart betrayed itself at wanting instinctively to reach out to this woman and women like her, and yet to stay safe within its own walls of recovery, of safety, and of solitude. I can certainly identify, but I often convince myself I have enough of my own struggles (though none worth holding up against this young Sudanese woman's). Marrying my new world of pleasure to the pains of this woman's story seems impossible. But it is, I think and hope. Because all of her story is not without meaning, and should she find the platform, the abilities of this young woman to share, to encourage, and to lead are unending. But the task is to first find the healing and the freedom that has been denied to her for so long. And that is not unlike the task left for many of us.

What is that first step, then? Is it to wake up and to find gratitude for another day? Is it to reconcile the past by simply being present, knowing that nothing is undone but that there is so much left in us to do and to become? Is it to hope and have faith in the surety of the promises wound all through the fabrics of scripture?

I am most compelled to pray in times like these. Times where everything seems contradictory from one day to the next when I am alert to things going on beyond my own heart and my own simple mind. I will pray that my contentment is not founded on pleasure alone in the things of this world but on goodness of God, even through the the most difficult and challenging of times, for myself and for others. Because I know, no matter how far the swelling of my heart may reach, God can always reach further.