He filled the hole in my heart! - Guest Post

The dark hole smelled of death, it was silent and sour.

It was the culmination, the final resting place of universal shame, a holding tank for failure.

For three days it was spoken of with disgust and despair

 by those whose hopes had been pulverized by a betrayal of trust.

For others who celebrated the death of the man laid to rest in the death cave, 

it was a proper memorial sight to the fraud. 

The clown.

Still for others who loved Him deeply it was a sacred place, 

for it was the bedchamber of their Lord and friend.

The unbelievers didn't know, that after three days there was a stirring.

The dead man opened His eyes and grinned.

He was alive, just as he knew he would be. 

His promise, he would keep.

He was giddy with joy as he stood up to leave the cave that could not hold him.

Jesus laughed out loud. 

I am the Resurrection, he said aloud.

The cave trembled at the sound of his voice. 

Heaven filled the hole.

The hole was now holy.

Jesus is alive! 

He filled the hole in my heart too!

Love...E

(This has been a guest post by Eileen Lynch)

Philemon

His eyes glanced upward catching mine. 
He would look just long enough, wondering, but not necessarily caring if I would scold him for playing, playing in the middle of the church service.  
Honestly, I was thankful for the distraction. 
 I have lost just enough of my religious thinking to think that this was anything more than a show. 
I hoped it wasn't for my benefit because I wasn't impressed.
My salvation is no longer found in “longer is better”.
As in many places not knowing the language makes it harder.
There is frustration in that.
Along with wanting to see the harvest, rather than trusting in the planting process.

I had already glanced over my notes for my evening message.
 I was now reading the words of Paul in Philemon.
The words in this tiny book get me every time.

“I am sending him, who is my very heart, back to you". 

I closed my eyes holding those words in my heart.
I wanted them to write themselves on my heart so I wouldn't forget this kind of love.
I glanced back at the playing boy. 
I watched him take the loose paper that had fallen from the curled pages of his paperback bible we had purchased a year ago. 
He was neatly folding the paper into three perfect paper frogs. 
Frogs that could jump if he tapped them just so with the tip of his finger.

Three dancing frogs. 
I had to smile.

My legs jumped from sitting too long, the heat made me sleepy, but I dare not sleep with half of the congregation watching my every move.
 I was the visitor, a.k.a the blond girl who can't get her clothing right to save her soul with  tattoo's on her feet now being forced to sit on stage, something I hate.
Sometimes I sit on the floor with the congregations just to prove a point.
It messes with things so I do it on purpose.

Soon the boy would take a string from the fray at the bottom of his blue jeans and tie it around a real live large beetle bug. 

Yes, the kind that make you jump when found in your room, your shower or your bed.

This beetle bug dared to walk right into the middle of the dancing frogs.

I was loving this mini circus. 

A show in a show thought my crancky self.   

He took the string, gently tied it around the beetle bug making him work like the big white bulls with the pink powder pulling the sugar cane carts on the street.

The beetle bug was pulling one of the dancing frogs.

His face beemed, mine too.  

The boy no longer glanced my way, I no longer counted the minutes until the show would be finished. 

Not the circus of dancing frog, the one in the pulpit.

There was no longer a language barrier, I understood just fine.

Finally it was over, children dismissed and I would pray for those who needed prayer. 

The magic word "Amen" was uttered and without a nudge he was gone.
The dancing frogs, the distraction, seemed to have no value.
They didn't leave with him. 
I glanced down where the circus had been performing, he had left them just as easily as he had made them. 
I considered taking them and saving them but thought it not very spiritual to disrupt the other show taking place.

As I stood praying for them, asking Jesus to come touch them, be real to them, heal them, bring work for them, give them hope, I was thinking about Paul, Philemon, the boy, the beetle bug and dancing circus frogs.

“I am sending him who is my very heart back to you".

 The tables now turned, my words had no meaning, they didn't speak English.
Ironically, maybe I was the show?
In my heart I was there to be His hands and feet. 
Please, Jesus you will have to do the rest.
I prayed there would be no barrier, that His heart, my actions would speak in place of language.
Lord, let my words be like dancing frogs and beetle bugs, let them connect.
Let this not be a show.
Lord, let me send your heart back to them.

How It All Started

“It was a trip of firsts, so many wonderful firsts. The smell of strong black coffee brewing in a sock, sweet with sugar swirling around in a tin cup. Women who swept the red dirt making it clean, the first time I saw fabric hanging in the place of an absent door blowing in the wind.  The first time I knew poverty wasn’t just about being poor, the first time I saw people walk all night through the mountains for medical care, care that might only be worm meds, antacids and something for the pounding in their head from hunger and dehydration. The first time I saw how so little can do so very much, the first time I saw people fight for a bowl of rice and beans.  It would be the first time I would leave my heart in a place I didn’t understand. 

When it was over, there would be one less child in this world who died in our care, life had some how gotten bigger and smaller at the same time, black and white pat answers turned gray and my circle of friends got smaller.  Not intentionally, not instantly, stuff changed, what was important changed.

No, I changed.”

And that is how it all started...

One short-term mission trip to Haiti and I was on a mission to do something about what I had seen.  I wasn’t one of those people who come home, sell everything and get on a plane the next week.  It took several years for me to figure out what would work. I hated the idea of a feeding program or orphanage; they only seemed like a bandage being applied to a hemorrhage. I was looking for long-term solutions.  

All of that fell into place when we met the missionary woman in the mini skirt and the hippie who should have been driving a VW van. My idea of shipping over one treadle sewing machine at a time to them quickly turned into over forty being donated to us. Next there was a meeting with the hippie and his wife, lots of prayer, a few tears and finally after seven years of trips we would make Haiti our home. Not with the idea of a business mind you, it was just going to be a sewing program teaching a hand full of ladies a trade to find a jobs with the intention of creating ways for them to keep their children fed, in school and with a place to live.

It all seemed logical that women needed to be empowered. They didn’t need pity they needed jobs, jobs and the courage to believe for a better life. Well, as the saying goes in Haiti, it is mountain after mountain. We had our first graduation and ladies with no place to work. Our sewing school would now grow in to what is Haitian Creations.

All these years later, I am still driven by the boy who died on the boat, the ladies who had the courage to change and this one thing the hippie said to me. He said, “What if you are the one the Lord has called to push through and you don’t do it?”