Stephanie

She was the kind of woman you write poems about. Not love poems, not sonnets or lyrics or psalms. She would inspire courage and boldness, a song of remembrance or heritage. This woman’s life was small, and her story was small, but it was rich with history and meaning. Every gray hair that crinkled into her chignon had grown out of an overcome difficulty, some failure that had grown into wisdom. Many people I have met during ministry are frail, brittle with the consistent surge of hardships that batter them. When we walk into their houses, they pull out plastic chairs or buckets from cobwebed corners, brushing them off with waxy, worn-out fingers. The adults look older than their age, and the children look young for their age. I suppose the former are tired from the battle that ensues daily in which they are the only soldiers, and the latter are not yet stained from the reality of where they live and who they are. One day, their eyes will be opened to the tepid water which they run barefoot through, the emptiness of thier bellies, the flies that buzz around their innocent eyelashes while they sleep. Let them keep their innocence, let them play with the deflated soccer ball, and be oblivious to the violence of their neighbors, the harshness of the sun, and the gnats in their hair. 

This woman, however, did not look tired. She looked strong. Stephanie, she said, my name is Stephanie. I was born in Haiti, and I have lived in the Dominican Republic, this foreign nation, for 20 years. Do you still have family there? Yes. Do you miss them? Of course. Why did you come to the Dominican? Necessity. That is why so many Haitians leave their home. They see the bright shining sun called Opportunity on the other side of this small island. They wave goodbye to their cinderblock homes and their jobs and their families, promising to return one they have made something of themselves, and then all they find are worse conditions in an unfamiliar place. The jobs they dreamed about are infected with prejudice and persecution. The border that separates them from their family grows thicker and stronger every day. If they were to struggle, they think, why not do it back home where they are surrounded by family?

My husband was taken twice in the middle of the night, she said. The Dominican police came to deport him, because we could not afford his visa. He was let go, because he knew some officers. I was afraid. Her eyes are as dark as the things she’s been through, but glinting off the watery surface is light, like the sun that touches the sea when it leaps up in waves. And just like the sea, she is tossed, scraped clean by salt, and stirring with mysterious things beneath the surface. She was not the only one who has waded through these things, whose skirt is dirtied by the muck of existence in an imperfect world. What sullies the skirt does not have to sully the heart, however, and her heart has been refined, freshened, and polished in the workshop of our God. She knows what we know, that it wasn’t meant to be this way, that children were never supposed to starve, that loved ones were not meant to be separated, that water was not supposed to be unclean. It was us, our own sin, that made this world imperfect, our arrogance that drowns us. It was not created to be this way. 

Did you go to school? Yes, when I was a little girl in Haiti, she said fondly. Did you like it? Yes, but I left when I was twelve, so I could work. In Haiti, if you live in the mountains, you are expected to go to the city when you turn 18, so you can find a job and provide for your family. I like this tradition, she says, it teaches independence from the world and dependence on God. How long have you known the Lord? For 2 years. I have always gone to church, but 2 years ago I began to follow Him. How did you come to follow Him? Her first husband had left her and her son, who is now in Brazil. She was tired of being alone and she prayed for someone to come and walk through life with her. God sent the man she lives with now. Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness, she said. Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:1)

What is your favorite thing about being a mother? I like to give advice, tell my children how to live and see them follow it. I like to see my children walking a good path. What is your advice to us, as young women, who are 18 years old and know so little about life? To choose your friends wisely, she said, to know who they are and to not let them lead you astray. To tell people about the Gospel, about the good news, which you preach so fearlessly. Continue to do this, for it is good. Yes, it is good for us to hike to homes, to hold babies and to cup the faces of broken-hearted people. But it is also good for her to be here, walking on Sundays to church, giving her children advice, and her neighbors cups of flour; to shut the ears of children against the hollering across the street, and to bandage their bruises when they fall. To be a mother is good, we said, and brave, and poetic. This was the kind of life you would write a poem about, this was the kind of woman worthy to be praised for her hard labor. Well done, Stephanie, one day our Maker will say. And she will respond, I am an unworthy servant who has only done her duty. Yet she will share in her Master’s happiness, along with all those who led big and small lives, along with me, who, like her, merely did my duty.