Grateful to be sharing Salvation in the Grieving over at SheLoves Magazine, in possibly one of my most favorite pieces I've ever written.
Whenever I share about my life overseas, people comment that I chose a hard path. Perhaps I didn't choose an easy road, but it was a great privilege to even be able to choose a path at all. This is no small thing. And though I endured some difficult things on this road, I still did that with the privilege of always having enough to eat, the comfort and safety of my home country available as a fallback, and a life full of people who love and would help me if I were ever to be in need.
This less-than-easy path bent me, perhaps, but it did not break me. What did break me, what really undid me, what grieved my heart to no end, was the suffering I saw in the lives of others. I went to the margins and befriended people there; and now life can never be the same.My ideas of what I think I deserve and a faith that doesn't cost me anything or cause me to live differently, can never be the same.
Going to the margins opened my eyes.
When I pray for my refugee, street child, and vulnerable friends, I pray for God to be near to them.
But I know God is near them. Because I know where God is. God is with Mama M as she struggles with her health, putting kids through school, paying more at the market for food than locals, and braving two hours a day of commute where she endures abuse. God is with T who has been waiting more than a decade for resettlement, and within weeks of being approved, has been banned by the US–just for being a refugee. God is with my Egyptian friends who enter their churches each week, even in the fear their church could be the next one to be attacked. God is with the little girls selling their bodies for food.