Muddy Feet

 

 

My friend Elsy & I working in the clinic

 

 

 

Hopeful faces. Each examination room door in the HIV clinic opens up to find an individual with a hopeful, expectant face. A mixture of vulnerability, uncertainty, and anticipation seem to cross the face of each person I meet sitting inside these rooms. Each one is waiting to hear how their “CD4 count” is, an important cell marker for how they’re responding to their tailor-made triple drug cocktail. They have a virus that hijacks the very cells that are supposed to be a means of fighting sickness (the T4 “Helper” cells). It hides and replicates inside their “Helper” cells, deceiving the body into thinking it’s a healthy cell. As it hides, it replicates itself until it suddenly bursts the cell, spreading the infection.

When I walk in the exam room door and introduce myself, many seem to immediately ask the silent question “Will you judge me?” I pray they see the love and compassion of Jesus Christ in me. I pray they see that I’m not volunteering in the clinic just so I have valuable medical knowledge to bring with me to Uganda. After almost two weeks of volunteering, I think the Lord has me here primarily to learn about compassion. Each person is an irreplaceable, eternal soul that He died for.

At one point and time, each one of these men and women heard the news “You’re HIV positive” and began to wrestle with deep feelings of shame, anger, and rejection. The news likely brought dark thoughts of an early, incurable death. The doctor that works in this clinic tells me that their prognosis  is very good if they take their medications without stopping. If a patient stops their medication or the disease becomes resistant to the medications available, their low resistance to other types of infection (like pneumonia) will become deadly.

The blow of hearing they have "the virus" goes far deeper than a physical issue however.  One gentleman very readily opened up to me about what he was experiencing emotionally. He shared how his biological family rejects him. He moved in to cared for his mother until she died, but is now isolated from his other family members. He says it’s to the point that he’s made alternate plans regarding who he’ll live near when he becomes older and has poor health. He told me he has a few friends here in Florida that he’s made his new family and would do anything to stay near them. “I’ve put some money aside and I’ve begged them not to leave me in the care of anyone else.” My heart breaks for the lies he’s believed, the choices he’s made, and the way he’s being treated. My Savior’s heart breaks for him and loves him more than he can imagine. I pray he meets Him and finds the love and acceptance he longs for.

This week I’ve been wrestling in a deep way with my own humanly incurable infection, called sin. It’s been in hiding in my heart, looking like a “Helper” cell, but my Great Physician, Jesus Christ isn’t fooled. Experienced with my sin, He knows just how to reveal its true nature to me. He often uses a technique called “the pressure of life circumstances” to strip away the healthy-looking outer facade. I’ve been horrified at the darkness that has come oozing out of every crevice in my heart as He’s applied this pressure. I think Isaiah 58:9 reveals a good description of my sin "symptoms". Verses 10-11 are a promise I'm willing to do anything to experience.

 

“..If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will become like midday. And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. “ Isaiah 58:9b-11

 “if you remove the yoke.."  The yoke of my selfish and unrealistic expectations on people. Placing things on others that the Lord Himself doesn’t even have for them. And even if He does, who am I to try and hold them to the fire (even just mentally) for it? The Lord has gently but firmly pointed out that failing to please Joy Wood isn’t a sin. Ouch. And even when there's a sin committed against me, my number one job is to hand it over in prayer.

“..the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness”.  Not outwardly speaking wickedness; no, no much sneakier. More like a silent self-talk and catty mental dialogue (sometimes with the person in my imagination. Ridiculous!). Often it's me playing a blame-game for what I'm struggling with (which isn't usually the person's fault anyway). When my focus is off like this, the  Lord says "What is that to you? You follow Me!". (John 21:22)  Yes, Lord.

I’ve spent the last few days repenting as the Lord has squeezed my heart and shown me evidence of this sin-infection. Thank You, Jesus, for John 13:10,12 when I feel like I'm just too dirty this time to be accepted and loved.

"Jesus said to him, 'he who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; you are clean, but not all of you. [..] So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you?' " 

Do I know what He’s done for me? If I do, I’ll walk away humbled, cleansed, and not condemned. He’s called me “completely clean” because I’ve accepted His sacrifice on my behalf. I bathed in His forever-forgiveness the moment I said "Here's my life, Jesus" and He’s been clean enough for the both of us ever since. He'll never reject me. He says about the sin He's been revealing in me: "I knew about it already; I'm not shocked or surprised. Just give it to Me and let me do away with it."  Thank You, Lord. Here I am. I give You my muddy feet.