You are Stronger
My dear friend Kate Hurley wrote this: It was beautiful and so inspirational, I wanted to share it! … Also she has written a book… feel free to check her site!
You Are Stronger Than You Think You Are
Yesterday,in Mexico where I am teaching at a YWAM base, I went to a home for labor trafficked girls from 6-8 years old and sex trafficked girls from about 10-20 years old for about 8 hours. My team and I were giving a well deserved break to the ladies that worked there.Putting these beautiful faces to an issue I have long cared about was both heartbreaking and hopeful, in that these girls still laugh and play and love despite the atrocities they have lived through.
After playing tag and cards and eating with them, they asked me if they could wash and cut my hair.
As I stuck my head under a sink with freezing cold water and had four little hands gently massaging my scalp and pouring shampoo over my head, I almost started weeping. One of these girls had burns on her arm where cigarette butts had been put out.
These hands had every right to bring violence to anyone they touched. It would be completely justified, as touch has been such a horrible part of their history.
And yet, here they were….Bringing healing with their touch. Touching each others hands as they sat and talked, their arms around each others’ shoulders. Touching my heart by welcoming me with such open arms. And then gently touching the head of a stranger as if I was their good friend.
The words from the prologue of my book came to me as I was with these girls, with new clarity:
You are stronger than you think you are.
You, your hands dirtied with the soil where you till up the rocks of generations gone by. Your tears watering the ground, making the roots grow deep and wide while you are unaware. You labor, you dig, you claw this tiny piece of land where others buried their dreams and gave up trying.
But not you. You keep going.You never give up. You see the tree in the seed, and you will fight until that tree is standing before you, it’s long willowing arms grasping your hope in its branches.
You are stronger than you think you are.
You, covered in all your scars. Where your face was grazed with false imaginings that you were not beautiful enough. Where your hands were caught in fields of cotton when you didn’t believe you were free. Where you were marked across your chest the day you thought that they left because you weren’t worth it. Look closely, love. Look closely because those scars are gilded with gold. Those scars have become your crown.
You are stronger than you think you are.
You, dancing there with your face against the wind. Not a pretty dance, but a wild dance. A hold on for dear life to the hope dance. An I will never stop believing in your goodness dance. A shake the sadness off your skin dance. You, with your feet pounding against the ground to the rhythm of your unsurrenduring spirit. With your knees soiled and bleeding from the prayers and the longings and the times you almost gave up. With your arms thrown up in surrender and beckoning and awe. “You are my love!” you yell, “And I will never stop believing!” There is burning against your back as you lift up your face, because your wings are returning, love. Your wings are returning.
Look at me and believe now. You are stronger than you think you are. Stronger than you think you are.
As they washed my hair, these girls were draining the dirt off of my often apathetic heart. A heart that often only looks at pain when it is my own pain. That I often pay attention to only when it is my own small tragedy that I am praying about.
The hope of these girls, who still love those around them despite the incredible pain they have endured, is the fabric that heaven is made of. That hope softened my heart and helped me to see the power that God has to restore, to wash clean.
God soften my heart. Allow me to touch people in beautiful ways like this. Allow me to pray for pain even when it is not my own.
http://thesexycelibate.com/author/iamkatehurley/
http://www.gettingnakedlater.com/
(Yes she is both a writer and a musician)… buy her book/music and send her love and compliments!
Jen Has Sunshine 
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