Today I Met a Girl

Today I met a girl.  Actually, she is a woman, but the way she shed her tears and haltingly told me the story of her difficult life, I was more reminded of a scared young child. A girl in need of some serious love and grace.

While working at church today, I answered the phone and found myself talking to a mother who told me she had recently become homeless.  She said she has 9 year old daughter and they are living out of her car.  She wanted to see if the church was able to help in any way.  I asked her to come by our office to see what we could do.

The woman and her daughter sat awkwardly on the couch as she spilled her heartache.  A past of terrible abuse by boyfriends, an absent father, a mother who fed her nothing but hate, children taken from her by social services, and her job lost.  I wish that was all, but there was more. And when she finished talking, a difficult silence hung in the air.  I had nothing.  What do you say to someone who has been dealt a horrible hand?  Maybe she hasn't made the best decisions in life, but no one deserves the type of abuse and hardship she described. She looked me right in the eye and said, "It's just so hard to have faith right now".  

Oh, how we need fathers.  We need our earthly ones and our Heavenly one too.  That poor woman had no father.  She sought out acceptance in the wrong men.  Now her children have no fathers and they are in danger of having no mother too.  I prayed with her.  I prayed for God to provide for their needs and provide a job for her.  I gave them some food and made sure they had a place to stay tonight.  What a little band-aid on the bigger picture of their pain!

I left work today so thankful for my loving, compassionate, and hard-working husband.  He loves our girls so fully and sacrificially.  I am thankful for my own father, who loved me and imparted the support I needed to move forward into this life unhindered by insecurity and fear.  And above all, I am thankful for God.  His grace and comfort is capable of reaching even the most heartbroken and hopeless.  May He meet the girl I met today and deliver her from her hopelessness and despair.  May He be the father she never had and heal her broken heart.

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

This, my friends, is beautiful fatherhood in action...