Changing our Stories
I love Friday mornings. Every Friday I get up earlier than normal to go to clinic, and arrive to see all my formula program women and their babies, there before me, laughing and sharing breakfast with each other. I am greeted with huge grins and loud hellos and "oh, you look so beautiful Laura!" "we're so happy to see you Laura!" Who wouldn't want to start their day to that?!
We have become a community. When faced with children who start their life with loss, orphaned and vulnerable, we have become the safety net they require. And not just a community for the infants we love to raise, but for each other as well. Sharing the weight when floods come into our houses, when riots plague our country, when I fly home to be with my father in the hospital, and return to 14 women genuinely asking how my family is. When I am sick and they take turns visiting me at my home with food and tea. We are a community for each other, a safety net for the children we support, and an example of education for the community. I LOVE Fridays.
One particular Friday stuck out to me this past October. We were working through a lesson on in-home safety - store your bleach out of reach, don't set the baby near the fire while you're cooking, basic stuff - and at the end of our class I switched focus. I said there is one more area that demands our attention; abuse in the home. Now keep in mind in a developing country the term "abuse" means something very different. My neighbors here get spanked and hit when they misbehave and that is cultural, however, I will step in if it goes too far or they are hit with an item instead of a hand, for example. I opened the floor with vulnerability and shared my own personal testimony of abuse. I talked about how a parents' job is to protect their child, from physical harm but also from the people around them in the home. The women respected what I had shared, and shook their heads in agreement.
And then courage entered the room. And my incredibly strong female translator asked without prompting if she could share her story. She told us through tears of growing up as a restavek, a term here used for a child slave, and shared stories of traumatic abuse that came in many forms. We wept alongside her and for her. We stood next to her in her courage and thanked her for sharing with us. And suddenly, as if courage decided to dance amongst us all, one by one the other women began saying they had similar stories. We shared and spoke words of encouragement and support, words of love and truth over one another.
And at the end, I said that we, us 15 women gathered in a room on a normal Friday morning in clinic, we had the power to change the stories. The testimonies we shared did not have to be the testimonies of the sweet infants on our laps or playing on the floor at our feet. WE had the power to change things for them. And not just for them, for our neighbors, for our nieces and our granddaughters; we had the power to raise sensitive men who heal instead of hurt, and we have the power to protect our girls from the harm we have personally felt. I wish each of you reading this could have felt what we did in the class that day; felt the courage it took each of us to boldly share our stories and the vulnerability and power that came with it. When a group of women can speak openly and hold each other up in moments of weakness powerful change can work in the midst of it.
I will never forget the way God moved in the room that morning. The atmosphere changed and it became a sense of pride and honor that we carried the ability to change the futures of the littles in our care. What a beautiful, Holy thing, that we have a hand in writing their stories and protecting them from our own hardest chapters. If I have learned anything this fall, it can be summed up perfectly in the story of this Friday morning; we may walk through hardship and fire and life may bring us struggles we think too great to handle, but God is always greater, God is always good, and redemption can be found in the deepest areas of heartbreak. And we can always, always use that to change the story.
We have become a community. When faced with children who start their life with loss, orphaned and vulnerable, we have become the safety net they require. And not just a community for the infants we love to raise, but for each other as well. Sharing the weight when floods come into our houses, when riots plague our country, when I fly home to be with my father in the hospital, and return to 14 women genuinely asking how my family is. When I am sick and they take turns visiting me at my home with food and tea. We are a community for each other, a safety net for the children we support, and an example of education for the community. I LOVE Fridays.
One particular Friday stuck out to me this past October. We were working through a lesson on in-home safety - store your bleach out of reach, don't set the baby near the fire while you're cooking, basic stuff - and at the end of our class I switched focus. I said there is one more area that demands our attention; abuse in the home. Now keep in mind in a developing country the term "abuse" means something very different. My neighbors here get spanked and hit when they misbehave and that is cultural, however, I will step in if it goes too far or they are hit with an item instead of a hand, for example. I opened the floor with vulnerability and shared my own personal testimony of abuse. I talked about how a parents' job is to protect their child, from physical harm but also from the people around them in the home. The women respected what I had shared, and shook their heads in agreement.And then courage entered the room. And my incredibly strong female translator asked without prompting if she could share her story. She told us through tears of growing up as a restavek, a term here used for a child slave, and shared stories of traumatic abuse that came in many forms. We wept alongside her and for her. We stood next to her in her courage and thanked her for sharing with us. And suddenly, as if courage decided to dance amongst us all, one by one the other women began saying they had similar stories. We shared and spoke words of encouragement and support, words of love and truth over one another.
And at the end, I said that we, us 15 women gathered in a room on a normal Friday morning in clinic, we had the power to change the stories. The testimonies we shared did not have to be the testimonies of the sweet infants on our laps or playing on the floor at our feet. WE had the power to change things for them. And not just for them, for our neighbors, for our nieces and our granddaughters; we had the power to raise sensitive men who heal instead of hurt, and we have the power to protect our girls from the harm we have personally felt. I wish each of you reading this could have felt what we did in the class that day; felt the courage it took each of us to boldly share our stories and the vulnerability and power that came with it. When a group of women can speak openly and hold each other up in moments of weakness powerful change can work in the midst of it.
I will never forget the way God moved in the room that morning. The atmosphere changed and it became a sense of pride and honor that we carried the ability to change the futures of the littles in our care. What a beautiful, Holy thing, that we have a hand in writing their stories and protecting them from our own hardest chapters. If I have learned anything this fall, it can be summed up perfectly in the story of this Friday morning; we may walk through hardship and fire and life may bring us struggles we think too great to handle, but God is always greater, God is always good, and redemption can be found in the deepest areas of heartbreak. And we can always, always use that to change the story.
