Sisterchicks Go Brit! (28 page)

Excerpt from
Take Flight!
,
a Sisterchicks® devotional

Shimmering Bits

W
hen we reach heaven, my best friend, Donna, and I want to introduce you to a woman we met in Latvia. Her name is Marija, and to be honest, neither of us wanted to go to her house to see her. But, oh, what a moment of glory we would have missed!

Donna and I went to Latvia in 1993 to bring chocolate chips and cheer to a young missionary wife. I was invited to speak to the women at a church in the capital city, Riga. After an already full day, our interpreter asked if we would consider going to visit a woman who was ill.

I looked at Donna; she looked at me. We had spent the day sharing our hearts, teaching from the Bible, and
standing for hours, listening through an interpreter to dozens of hurting women as they looked to us for any drop of encouragement. Since it now was after nine at night, I was ready to find a few nourishing morsels of food and fall into the nearest bed. Offering my weary self to all the germs of an ill person seemed like a bad idea.

“It’s up to you,” Donna said, giving me a bedraggled look.

Apparently it wasn’t truly up to me, because even though my mind was saying, “Sorry, no,” my mouth somehow translated those two simple words into, “Okay, we’ll go.” What is it the Bible says about the Spirit of God interceding for us? Does He transpose our intentions for us as well?

We were offered a ride to Marija’s house so we wouldn’t have to depend on the public tram. Unfortunately, the hospitality offered exceeded the maximum load capacity available. Like a troupe of circus clowns, we smushed seven bodies into a Soviet sedan built for four.

“You’re squashing me,” I murmured into the back of Donna’s head. She was smaller and hence given the princess position on my lap.

“You’re hogging all the legroom,” she countered under her breath.

“Am not. Stop jiggling.”

“I’m not jiggling. It’s the road, or should I say, the ruts in the road?”

Our interpreter squeezed a peek at us from her two-to-a-front-seat position. “All is okay?”

I’d forgotten that anyone else in the car spoke English and could understand our squabbling. Donna and I have been known to have our feisty moments. We’ve found that exchanging dialogue as if we were childhood sibling rivals defuses tension. Our interpreter, however, didn’t know that.

“All is okay?” she asked again. “We have only another ten minutes to drive.”

“Ten minutes?” I groaned, feeling my legs going numb.

“This was your idea,” Donna muttered.

I would have pinched her accessible backside, but my hand was wedged behind the door handle.

Our ten-minute ride turned into twenty minutes. I felt as if we were being kidnapped. The dark skies hurled javelins of lightning followed by roars of thunder. Apparently Donna and I weren’t the only two elements having a spat that night.

The clown car came to an abrupt stop in front of a dilapidated manor that I felt I’d seen before—when I had toured a Hollywood studio and viewed a set for the original
Addams Family
show. Or was it
The Munsters?

Big drops of rain pelted us as we performed a series of unattractive contortions to extract our bodies from the car. I opened my travel umbrella, but a gust of wind popped it inside out. Nothing about this moment felt good.

We dashed to the front door, where a flickering overhead light welcomed us. I held my breath. Not because I expected to be greeted by Cousin Itt, but because it smelled awful. Like dead cats. The woman who opened to our late-night knock wasn’t Morticia, but Marija’s full-time caregiver. She ushered us quietly into what had once been the dining room of this large house. In typical Communist fashion, the upstairs and downstairs had been converted into many cubicles of space with a separate family occupying each cubicle.

Tentatively approaching the corner, where a single lamp was lit, we came as close as we dared to the narrow bed where the diminished invalid sat, propped up by a pillow. Her white hair was clean and combed back from her glowing face. I hadn’t expected Marija to be so astonishingly beautiful.

At first I wondered if the dim light on this elderly woman’s pale skin gave her such a glow. Or did she have a fever? A contagious sort of fever that made her look rosy, vital, and yet oh so infectious?

She stretched out her right hand, eager to greet us, to touch us. Her fingers curled in, her wrist was bent. Yet
she smiled radiantly. Donna and I hung back, waving our hellos rather than making contact with her. Then I noticed that Marija had no lumps under the covers where her legs should have been. Her left hand lay motionless at her side.

Marija wasn’t sick. She had contracted polio forty years ago, when part of the remedy included amputation.

Donna and I were offered two of the three wobbly straight-backed chairs available. Marija began at once to roll out her grace-story for us. Our interpreter could barely keep up as Marija described her losses: a baby at birth, another child in his toddler years, and her husband soon after he was drafted into the Russian army. By the time she was twenty-two, Marija had lost almost everything. Then the polio came and took her legs.

The demure woman spoke softly, with her chin down, as she described how angry she had been with God and how deep the darkness that seemed to swallow her for several years. Then she asked God a question. Not a “why” question, but a “what” question. “What can I possibly do for You now? I am of no use.”

And God answered her.

I looked at the others. They didn’t blink at her statement. This woman said God answered her. He spoke to her. Was that why her countenance glowed? What does God say to such a small, broken woman on the other side of the world?

With clear, honest eyes, Marija spoke, and her answer was translated. “God told me He took my legs so I would not run around on this earth. Nearly anyone can do that. He asked me to do something different for Him. Something special. Something not everyone can do. He asked me to run every day between this earth and heaven and to carry up to Him the heart cries of His children. This is my job. My purpose. I run to heaven every day.”

The room became very still. Donna and I sat with tears shimmering in our eyes, unashamed to let them fall without a sound onto our folded hands in our laps. I found it easy to believe that every time Marija stepped into those courts of heaven, she returned to earth with a bit of glory dust on her face. That was why she glowed.

Our interpreter went on to add that Marija used her crippled hand to write letters to encourage believers around the world. She wrote to Corrie ten Boom once, and Corrie, via an interpreter, wrote her back.

Marija’s eyes twinkled at the name Corrie ten Boom. I had met Corrie in California, and that was why Marija wanted to meet me. I worked for a ministry organization that handled all of Corrie’s correspondence during the year
The Hiding Place
, the movie about her life in a concentration camp during World War II, was released.

Marija pulled the crumpled letter from under her pillow and reached out her hand to show it to me. One
of her most treasured possessions was this letter from Corrie, a woman who knew what it was like to be swallowed by darkness.

Oh, what a gift Donna and I would have missed if we hadn’t been willing to “cast our nets on the other side,” so to speak, of our schedule and energy to visit Marija. We’re still feeding off the shimmering bits of glory pulled up during that exchange.

When it was time to go, Donna and I stood and went over to Marija to curl our arms around her. I pressed my cheek against hers and whispered a blessing, sealing it with a kiss on that rosy, glowing face. She drank it in and blessed me back, promising to pray for Donna and me every day.

Then one November morning, two years after we kissed Marija’s face, she made her daily run to heaven, and this time Jesus told her she could stay.

O
h, Marija, what a picture of grace your life was! You give all of us a new perspective on the struggles we face each day.

Nearly all of us have found ourselves in situations in which we felt like the pregnant woman who wishes she could skip that whole delivery thing. You know, no way out but the way we would prefer to avoid. None of us wants to suffer pain or loss of any kind. We don’t ask for something like a physical disability or a lifelong battle with mental illness. But when life’s overwhelming challenges come, the only road available is the one that goes right through the pain.

Have you been around someone who has been through some dark valleys? How did that person’s experience change your perspective on your life circumstances?

With the blessings of Marija’s daily trips to heaven on the wings of prayer, she glowed like an otherworldly saint. But when we see her losses and pain, her oh so normal bout with depression and anger, we know she is one of us.

Has there been a time when you found yourself feeling angry with God or others over your circumstances? For most of us, anger is an unavoidable place to travel through during
tough times. While we may not be able to avoid visiting “anger,” we certainly don’t want to make it our permanent address!

In His kindness to us, the Lord says, “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life” (Ephesians 4:26–27).

When we choose to push beyond the anger, through the gate of surrender, we find the peace and joy that initially seemed impossible. Marija surrendered her anger to God, and she glowed. Well, guess what? So can we! This is how it happens: “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life” (Philippians 2:14–16,
NIV)
.

So, go ahead—you glow, girl!

Whoa … it’s getting shimmery bright in here! Glory!

• Psalm 91:14–16. Hold on for dear life.
  
• Daniel 12:3. More shining and glowing.
  
• 2 Corinthians 1:8–12. A reason for hope for those in need.
  

A Peep or Two from You