The bird with a broken wing, called Lisa

Every so often you have an encounter with a visitor to the Jesus Centre which is incredibly humbling and reminds you of why (on a good day) it is such a privelege to work here. Lisa (not her real name), was one such visitor. In her late 20's, like a little sparrow with a damaged wing, she came to the drop in window, fortunately on an afternoon when it was a Your Space session, our women only drop in, and for her, fortunately it was empty. For me I was feeling like I was wasting my time hanging around waiting to see if any of the regulars would turn up. Then suddenly I spotted her at the window. She was reluctant to come in, but when I offered her the option to talk privately & explained there was no one else around she agreed. I knew I had to be very patient and very gentle (neither of which are my particulr strong points!) if I was going to get her to unfold her damaged soul and tell me the reason she'd come. 

She was desperate, she needed help, she'd tried to commit suicide a few weeks earlier; she'd been diagnosed with a personality disorder and she had come today because she was all alone and she hopeless & so she'd decided she needed to get out of the house & be amongst people before she tried to overdose again. Her voice was quiet and racked with pain and I could sense her hopelessness. To her I would have appeared cool, calm & in control. On the inside I was thinking ' I need to phone the emergency mental health team, this woman's serious and I feel out of my depth right now to know what to say or do...' but I also managed to send up a desperate prayer, "God please help me to be gentle & give me the right words to say". I handed the situation over to God and relaxed.

She unfolded her damaged soul & let me have an insight into what was causing her pain....I knew in my spirit that God had brought her here today, because he wanted her to know that He loved her, cared about her, knew all about it & wanted to begin the process of healing....  so I decided to start by telling her that. Then I asked her if she believed in God & if she'd like to write him a letter & tell Him how she was feeling. As she wrote it, I prayed inside that God would help me to know what to say & do next. What she wrote was beautiful and honest and deeply humbling. It started simply with a cry from deep with her, "God please help me". It apologised for not living a good life, described the pain she was feeling, the abuse she had suffered and asked God for His help. As I read it out I hoped she felt what I sensed, which was God coming down and wrapping His arms around her and reassuring her that He had heard her. It felt an incredibly privelege to have been let into her life. Me a total stranger, from a stable Christian upbringing, who knew nothing of the pain she shared. I scambled around in my soul for a time when I'd felt desperate and shared on my experience of my Father's sudden death in my late teens and my fall out with God about it and my own desperate prayer, which had been much more "God I'm angry, I don't understand & you had better come up with an explanation for this because right now I'm not impressed!". 
I wasn't about to promise her a quick fix solution, 'pray this prayer, take this pill & it will all be ok.' For Lisa and many others I meet, God isn't some going to wave a magic wand & take away what happened, He may not even take away the memories. What happened, happened, it was wrong and it had caused pain and damage, mentally and emotionally to such an extent that Lisa had developed a personality disorder to separate the adult from her abused child. None of that was going to change over night, but I shared that I believed that God could heal the memories and the scars it had left could heal and He could ease the pain that they caused. Inside I prayed that God would turn up & at least do that for her. She looked more relaxed and said she felt more at peace. Having assured me that she no longer felt suicidal I let her fly off with an invitation to return any time she needed to talk or pray again. I've not seen her again. I pray to God that she's still alive and ok somewhere and that maybe I'll see her again.


After, she'd gone, I sat for a few moments thanked God for her and the opportunity He'd given me. So often in the drop in you can feel overwhelmed by the need, demands and emotional suffering of people. But that afternoon I was aware that God had come down to Earth and got involved in our painful, rotten world. He is willing and wanting to get His hands dirty. Are you?