grape sodas and hope... part 1

The day I met Phumzille in the hospice, she may have weighed 85 pounds. Her smile and facial expressions reminded me of my sister Lakyn. The more I visited, the more honest our conversations became, and after getting her sodas while laughing at some translation problems, the talks turned to Jesus. I told her I was visiting the hospice to learn about real friendships and love and hope. I told her I wanted to watch Jesus do great things. One afternoon she began telling me what God was starting to do in her heart the past few days. I recorded a little bit of the conversation roughly in my journal…

“she began to tell me she thought God was reaching out to her and that she should reach back. How beautiful... I got to share the acts 17 passage with her about Paul telling the areopagus that God set the places were we should live ‘so that they might SEEK HIM, for he is NOT FAR from each one of us.’ I got to tell her finding God and having him close to me was the thing that gave me joy in life and that this joy overwhelms circumstances. As we talked about Jesus in the hospice room with her bloody urine in a bag beside us and her uneaten food between us, I realized I was having one of the more meaningful and enjoyable conversations in my life. Truly Jesus pierces our helplessness with light and life. He walks in the aids hospice and meets the most tired of hearts…”

I went on to tell her that God’s presence was not far away but in the hospice room with her. The kingdom of God, the “dance of God”, I said, is happening all around us. This interaction between God and people is ready to steal us away, ready to make us new. He wants to give us hope and joy and company and rest and peace even in these dark hard places. He wants us to reach for him, because he’s certainly reaching for us. I loved telling her God wasn’t a stranger to aids hospices and broken bodies. As we talked we began to inch toward each other and our voices got lower, almost to a whisper. Its as if we were saying secret thing, things if said “from the rooftops” might evaporate or become trite or wrong. We weren’t trying to be dramatic, its almost as if we were saying delicate words. I whispered about the dance of God and its hope as she grinned and whispered back. There were no trite words shared, no minor tones, no empty hopes... just honest conversation.

I’m smiling as I type thinking about her small, emaciated body and her wide, closed eyed smile as she thought about God reaching out to her. She broke my heart and made it beat loudly in the same conversation that day. She was one of my favorite people to have a grape soda with.