I recently wrote about one of my genius friends offering me the beautiful reminder that communion with God must be a daily renewal. (The really smart, computer savvy bloggers know how to insert a link for that post here, but sadly, I am not one of those bloggers. The post is called Every Day of the Week And Twice on Sundays, if you want to read it).
So
get this, another genius friend of mine said another genius thing in my very
same kitchen on that VERY SAME NIGHT. It
could have been the wine, but I’d prefer to think it’s because, clearly, my
girlfriends rock, and therefore, let’s once again go with the theory that so
must I.
This
particular friend of mine is involved with a ministry called Wiphan. The name Wiphan comes from combining the
words ‘widow’ and ‘orphan,’ and the goal of this organization is to “equip
widows and orphans for a productive life, offering hope to the hopeless through
the love of Jesus Christ.” Wiphan does
most of its work in the compounds of Nkwazi and Mapalo, which are in Zambia,
the tenth poorest country in Africa. The
population of each of these areas is approximately 40,000 people, most of whom
live in homes built of mud bricks, which often leak during the rainy season. The people have little or no furniture, no
running water or indoor plumbing, and most are without electricity. A widow and her children typically end up
living in such compounds after “property grabbing” occurs after the death of
the husband. This culturally accepted
practice allows the deceased husband’s family to strip the widow of all her
financial and material resources, leaving her without any means of supporting
herself and her children. Most widows
are uneducated and without job skills.
Jobs for unskilled widows are practically nonexistent in an economy with
a 50% unemployment rate, and many women in the compounds turn to prostitution
for income.
Wiphan
has started two schools near these compounds that provide a free education,
five meals a week, basic medical care, and uniforms to over 400 children in
grades 1-7. The organization also helps
fund tuition for children who wish to further their education beyond seventh
grade in government secondary schools, while providing those children with
encouragement, discipleship, and academic assistance through their Inshila Program. In addition, Wiphan offers free skills
training in hospitality, jewelry making, and keyboarding to widows and older
orphans. Finally, the organization has partnered
with another ministry, Tuli One (We Are One) to develop group homes that
provide supervision, care, and protection to orphans who attend the Wiphan
schools.
Please check out this amazing ministry and the incredible
work they are doing by visiting the Wiphan website at www.wiphan.org
Now
I’ve been trying to write about what this friend of mine told me in my kitchen for
weeks, but every time I did, the words just wouldn’t come out on the computer
screen like they were making me feel in my mind and heart and soul. Because the truth is, these words . . . I will
NEVER forget them. These words were life
changing.
I
am a guilty person. I feel a lot of
guilt about a lot of things a lot of the time.
If I eat a cookie on a weeknight after working out, I feel guilty. If I miss a sporting event for one of my
children, I feel guilty. If I am late to
a meeting with a friend, I feel guilty.
If I complain about something in my house to my husband who is working
so hard to provide for our family, I feel guilty. I spend a lot of life feeling guilty about my
failures, my shortcomings, my mistakes, my selfish desires.
And it’s exhausting. It’s
exhausting and stupid and worthless and the Bible tells me not to do it.
I
do it anyway.
My
friend recently spent a week in Zambia visiting the widows and orphans that
Wiphan is helping to equip. During her
time there, she had the opportunity to visit one of the Tuli One housemoms, who
currently cares for four double orphans – four boys without anyone else to care
for them, who all attend Wiphan’s Nkwazi campus. The woman’s name is
Lyness.
Lyness
lives in the Nkwazi compound in an area called “The Overspill.” It’s called by this name because it is on the
outskirts of the compound, which is overcrowded, so it literally is the “overspill.” The address written on Lyness’ house actually says Overspill.
When
my friend arrived at Lyness’ home, the woman was doing laundry in the backyard
(washing clothes in a bucket and hanging them on tree limbs to dry). She welcomed my friend into her mud home,
proudly showing her around. Lyness had a
nicer home than many in the compound – five rooms large including a living
room, kitchen, and three bedrooms. She
did not have indoor plumbing or electricity.
My
friend quickly noticed that just outside Lyness’ home, she had drawn a large
rectangle in the dirt, and on one side of the rectangle, there were two large tree
limbs stuck into the ground. Wondering
what all this was about, my friend asked why the woman had such things. And her response was so unbelievably
precious, I can hardly think about it without tears streaming down my face.
“That’s
where I’m going to add on to my home one day.”
I
picture the mud house in my mind. I
picture the woman and the dirt and the orphans and the poverty and the
starvation and the illness and the AIDS and the death running rampant in her
country and beyond, and the woman . . . Lyness . . . full of holiness . . . overspilling with holiness . . . because
she wasn’t thinking about any of that.
She was thinking about having a nicer home one day.
And
the tears just keep falling. Because
Lyness and me . . . we aren’t that different.
Adding
on.
A
plan for something more.
A
dream of something better.
Hope.
What
a beautiful, glorious word, and yet much of the time, we discard it. We make it insignificant, even insufficient. Why?
Why do we forget about the hope we have when it’s such a part of
everything we believe and love and hold sacred?
HE.
IS. HOPE.
And
He wants us to be hopeful.
We
don’t have to feel guilty about the desires of our hearts, as long as they aren’t
the focus of our lives. It’s okay to
dream big. It’s okay to think about having
something better than what you have now.
Being content doesn’t mean you can’t be hopeful at the same time. Thanking God in every circumstance doesn’t
mean you can’t wish for something different, something more, and set your
sights on making it happen. God knows
your heart anyway, so why pretend you don’t want to be a better cook, a better
wife, a better mom, a better friend?
We
have Him, and because of that, we can have hope. We SHOULD have hope. Hope like the hope of Lyness, who dares to
dream big. Hope that doesn’t see anything
standing in the way of what God can do.
Hope
that overspills. 
