Messy Road
Life on the road is messy. The kids in the backseat discover the joy of turning sippy cups upside down, the cookie crumbs gravitate to water, and the creative skills of small humans focus their energies on edible mud pies. In retrospect the mature adult comments on how much they reflect their Creator in their ability to think outside the box and make something good out of nothing! Better that then needing the barf bag on a mountainous curve, at least! Some years back our journey took us down the messy road of contracted TB. Muddy, bumpy roads through the bleak and heartless wilderness of the Balkan wars, we wandered. In and out of refugee camps and homes, into the hearts and lives, the love and tears of wounded souls seeking to harden themselves to pain, we wandered, weeping with them, softening the shell, reaching in, and finding a heart longing to be healed. Miles of humor, with mattresses stacked ten high on a tiny, ancient Fiat, the back doors bursting as we delivered the love of concerned people from all over Europe into the homes of the wounded. Did I say homes? Triple stacked bunk beds three beds wide - one platform being the entire space allocated to a single family. Or the house of forty, all distantly related, who fled a village together. Or the room given to the elderly couple with bleeding feet who walked through the snowy mountains with their very pregnant daughter in law.
Messy? Yes, and crowded, and smelly. But like children making mud pies, our feeble hugs mixed with tears created surprising miracles. Deep friendships were formed; ones that will last through Eternity. And in it all, with all the mess, somewhere TB was contracted. This kicked off a forced life change, a state of constant pain, an era of sterile frustration, and the deep bereavement of being torn from all we loved. The pilgrim road entered a dark cloud, until we realized that God is present in the cloud. Ultimately God used it for good.
Someone has said that the hearts who weep with Christ, the hands which long to serve with Christ, bear the mark of the Cross of Christ. A puzzling reality, to take up your Cross and follow Him and find the burden light in the midst of unexplainable confusion and inexplicable pain. He always comes back and quietly gives back the years the locusts have eaten, yet never as we would imagine.
Just yesterday we heard of another pilgrim walking the same path. She has spent months volunteering her time to care for a mother and son who both have cerebral palsy in a nation where being handicapped carries such stigma that they are house bound. Now the mother is dying of cancer. She’s on a drip and wears an oxygen mask. Her son has TB, can not speak, and is even more impaired with CP than his mother. Her first son has already died of the disease. At his death Jesus visited the mother in a dream, with her son, who was healed eternally. Since the mother lives in a nation where the name of Jesus is not known, her choice to follow this Jesus has isolated her farther. But she now lives with joy.
And the volunteer? While serving this family in the abandoned building they house she contracted the TB too. Now tumors and cysts have spread to her other organs. And she is responsible for the care of three younger siblings. Her path is yet uncharted. The messy road, with all it’s pain, is in her face right now.
Wouldn’t it seem perfect if when we do good we get good, like brownie points? Lets put all the nice stuff on a scale and come out with some sort of shield against all nasty, mucky, unexpected, painful life incidents, right? Wrong! That scale would never measure up, don’tcha know. In the end it’s such a relief to know that in the dark, the cloud, the mess, the unfathomable ... and the mud pies in the back seat, we have a God who is Emmanuel - with us - and able to take this all on and turn it around for incredible good. With that perspective even the messiest journey takes on a sense of adventure.