(okay -- the final post on this--thanks for hanging in there).

I find when I tell this story I tell it quietly, as if it is a secret. It is something too horrible for the ears of children. Yet E was only 8 when it all happened. (8 years old and all grown up...)

After they buried her brother and her cousin, her mother went about the process to get the rest of them out of there. She knew "the bad people" would be back and could no longer wait for the husbands to send for them.

(I cannot remember what became of the men, but I believe they are alive today. I wonder if I believe that because E believed it, or because it was a fact. I cannot be sure. She said they were pastors who planted a church somewhere in the United States. I never met her father, and don't remember him listed in her file. Maybe he is dead. I hope not. But for whatever reason, they hadn't connected at the time E passed through my life.)

I don't know how her mother made the connections she did, but shortly after the death of her brother, E was sold to an American Prostitute in exchange for the safe passage of her mother and all of her siblings. They lived in a room in the very brothel that E was peddled out of. Right here in Sunny Southern California. She lived this way for 3 years until her sick and tortured little body was brought to a medical clinic where she was diagnosed with Syphilis and Gonorrhea. It was at this moment that she became a ward of the state. 3 years later, I met her at the group home, my objective to get her in touch with her anger.

How could she not be angry? Her story certainly invokes anger in me even today. How could a mother sell her baby girl, and live in the very house where she is abused? How could grown men murder children in obedience to an evil government? How could God allow such evil to exist? Why E? I actually asked her these questions in Spanish when I was finally able, and she finally became angry. Very angry. The only time. Fire in her eyes, she said to me "How can you have so much and comprehend so little?" "You live like royalty without any idea what it is like anywhere else. You have all the time in the world to talk about other people's problems yet you can't see your own. Americans are spoiled children who never really grow up, yet you think you know better than everyone. God was never absent , He was with me all along! He is with me today. He was with my brother in his time of need. And my brother is with Him today."


She could NEVER be angry at her mother. Her mother did what was necessary to save her, to save all of them. E was honored to have been a part of that. Her small sacrifice saved them all. A small moment of discomfort for a lifetime of hope. Her mother never left her. Still didn't. And now she counted the days until she would be "free". She would be released from the system on her 18th birthday. Until that day, she would see her mother on her scheduled visits and ask about her brothers and sisters, some of whom had been placed in Foster Care. Like Corrie ten Boom, she saw every hardship in the light that God had intended. Thankful for the disease that sent her to the hospital and released her from the indentured servitude. Thankful that it rendered her "useless" to the prostitute who kicked her family out into a kinder, simpler world. They were here. Their land of dreams. The worst was over.

I know that E's anger was not directed at me specifically, but at my culture. I know I deserved it as much as anyone else. I was one of many people that she saw in her days in the system. She may not even remember me today. But I remember her. Every day. I believe I am a better mother because I knew her. I learned to listen to my children and learn from them. I learned to let them be who they are, not who I want them to be. I learned to point them to Jesus and let him to the work. Because I can't.

And I realized something about me that is still coming to be. I want to introduce people to my God, a God who loves the world's children. I don't ever want to "fix" anyone (even though I still catch myself doing it). Or "convert" them. These things require change and knowledge of "how things should be." We don't know that. We can't know that. And the second we think we know, we are "the poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more." I don't think God ever intends to change us the way we understand that word. He certainly doesn't want us to change others. He just "redirects us" now and then. He does that. Not me. Not the church. And without a real love for the people I feel called to, I am just a noisy gong. (1 Corinthians 13) Because without the love, God isn't coming. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ebi est. (Where there is love, God is) I knew that in my head. But I didn't really learn it until I met E. Thank you, Lord. Thank You, E.

(How E met You, I don't really know. But oh, how well she knew You. And she forgave me for being ignorant. Arrogant. Self-serving. Pious. A Pharisee. She forgave You, her mother, the evil soldiers -- she was free. Help me to forgive them, too. Thank you for being a God that gave a tiny woman the courage to stare down evil and collect her dead baby to bring him home, and thank you that you gave her the courage to do the thing she had to do, as You did once for us (John 3:16). Thank you that all of these circumstances brought E to me, for a moment. Continue to bless her life, Lord, wherever she may be. Every Day.)