As a kid I ran from brokenness. Whenever a fight broke out at school while some excitedly gravitated toward it I’d subtely turn tail and literally walk away in the opposite direction. I remember doing this often. Whenever I found myself in proximity to deep hurt, sickness, or wreckage my sensitive psyche wanted nothing to do with it so in my fear I’d flee.

“I only need to get through the day.”  I say this every day, and so today became a long season. And the “right now” that I can’t stand, also can’t fit into a day.  Hours and minutes can’t explain this today.

Today I cried. I cried a lot.  I cried, and the more I tried to stop, I couldn’t.  And I tried to pray while crying, and wasn’t able to articulate a word.  I was angry and frustrated, and then exhausted of being angry and frustrated. And then I started crying again.  I wasn’t even weeping; I was bawling. It almost felt as it was a tantrum, on why, oh, why can’t things be a little better, just a little?

Today I fell down the stairs, and when I was writing about it, the words that came out changed ‘fell’ into ‘failed.’  Rolling down the stairs wasn’t as painful as the idea of not being able to stop at the bottom of the staircase. And I cried again.  The more I cried, the more I realized that the pain from falling and failing has become too familiar lately. And the scratches and bruises are hard to see from the inside… so I didn’t realized I was as hurt as I was.

I got lost today.  I got carried away while fighting with my thoughts and next thing I knew, I was in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where to go. This is a recurrent feeling in my life lately. I just don’t know how or where or when to take the next step.

Today I tried to read a little, but tears were wetting the pages.  Then I tried with a different book, but even just flipping the pages was painful and exacerbating.  I wanted to find some clarity, but the letters were as blurry and dark as my heart is right now.

So I tried to read a softer bible verse – just one. Maybe one that was easy to digest.  One that wouldn’t require me to hold onto something that is too far away.  I just needed something for the “right now.” Something for today.  And there it was, the one that has come over and over in the past months, from the voice of good friends, in an old bookmark and a couple of other random places. “Be still and know that I am God.”  The words said, “don’t move” as they saw me in pain.

And the irony is that “stillness” is not the word that caught my attention this time but “know.” And as I defragment this season of ‘today’s’, I can only smile and know the one thing I should know.  And maybe hope and dream a little for tomorrow, or the day after. Meanwhile today, I just sit with these thoughts.

Liz Herrera loves to learn, read, have a good cup of coffee and find creative ways to combine her passions: communications, urban ministries, social action and mixed media.  Liz is a journalist and has served alongside the team of CTM Guatemala since 2006 and worked for over 12 years among marginalized populations with churches and non-profit organizations.

Once again, I closed the newspaper and tried to think of better news, instead of reading about another murder.   Once again, I passed in front of the yellow tape a policeman had put up at the scene of a crime. Once again I wanted to cry out to God on behalf of the families involved. One more death. One more kid. One more driver. One more child. One more woman. One more is too much and is one more than necessary. When a human life is lost, the feelings of powerlessness and the inability to feel comfort are natural, and lately the feeling of powerlessness has begun to feel normal. But in the last few weeks, I have also been trying to reflect on new ways to listen to the Spirit that guides us in the midst of such trying times.

“Listen! Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” – Genesis 4:10

Recently I have been reading a book called Power & Poverty by Dewe Hughes. He mentions this passage from Genesis 4:10, analyzing reactions to injustice and the incorrect use of power by certain groups. Though in and of itself it is such a powerful message in the context of the struggle for power, I realized that the very literal words have a much deeper meaning than I ever previously noticed.  Something special about this verse is that it is God himself who is talking; he recognizes what is going on. This should be enough to allow us to breathe more easily. God knows. God does not ignore what these hands are doing. But more than that, God speaks of the blood as a symbol of life and he speaks of your brother. What a great implication this has on my identity. The blood that has been shed is part of my blood! He also speaks of a cry – a voice that calls out for justice, a voice that speaks out of the ground, the lowest place on earth, the point from which the shed blood cannot be gathered again.

Every one of these words can be deeply analyzed, but I have found myself thinking over and over again of the phrase as a whole: ‘Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.’ I can almost hear it as if it were spoken to me! I ask myself, ‘Can you not hear it? Have you not realized? What are your going to do with that voice, that cry?’

In the middle of the city of Kingston, Jamaica there is a statue in memory of the children who have died in tragic circumstances. The title of the sculpture is ‘Gone too soon’. It is surrounded by the names of hundreds of children whose lives have been taken and the date of their murders. When we visited, we were told that at the unveiling of the statue, one of the hopes expressed was never having to write another name on it. This has not been the case. But despite the circumstances, the first step is being taken: the cry of the bloodshed has been heard. As symbolic as it can be, as little as one monument represents, it is doing something.  There are people who are writing down one more name, one more date. And they seek justice.

Some of us have the privilege of walking in the ‘lowest places’ and being witnesses of the tragedy, violence, and pain that exists in these communities because of injustice, death and scarcity. We also have the privilege of listening to the cry rising up from these low places – a cry that unites us. We are witnesses of a divine voice that recognizes and hears our cry, and He does not remain silent.

Liz Herrera loves to learn, read, have a good cup of coffee and find creative ways to combine her passions: communications, urban ministries, social action and mixed media.  Liz is a journalist and has served alongside the team of CTM Guatemala since 2006 and worked for over 12 years among marginalized populations with churches and non-profit organizations.

yeah, that’s a big word usually associated with life science class & people in the hospital with heart troubles.  if you don’t know what it is, it’s the sac around our heart that protects it.  if a pericardium is too weak, it’s not good for our hearts because it makes it too vulnerable.  if it’s too tough, it’s not good, either, because it chokes off life.

a few months ago my acupuncturist who is part-spiritual-director-part-therapist-part-healer told me i needed to strengthen my pericardium.  she was right when it came to a particularly hard season in an important relationship.  there are times that i give too much of myself, take things too personally and make everything about me, and just don’t have enough heart protection.  at the same time, it’s also easy to swing the other way & harden and protect my heart against pain, suffering, and intimate relationship and hide behind “strong boundaries.”  the reality is that there’s a very fine line when it comes to pericardiums; a healthy pericardium means we can feel pain & engage in the realities of real life but not have it completely devastate us. 

i continue to learn what it means to develop a healthy pericardium as a pastor, mommy, wife, and friend.  it’s an art, not science. it requires faith not formulas.  it requires time & God’s grace & lots and lots of exercise and practice.

and the thing i keep learning is that a healthy pericardium does not protect us from pain.  it’s not supposed to.   it’s purpose is to give us enough protection to not let the pain overtake us & shut us down completely when it gets really, really tough. 

this week, my heart hurts.

like really hurts.

while i was in nashville speaking at outlaw preachers, i got news that one of my dearest refuge friends, an amazing & brave & survivor-of-all-kinds-of-atrocities single mommy had died.  i had broken one of my most basic speaking rules and had my phone with me on the podium because it had a quote on it i wanted to use and was too lazy to write it down.  i saw the missed calls & knew, somewhere deep inside that i can only attribute to the holy spirit, that something terrible had happened.  i knew who the calls were from.  i knew who they loved and cared for at the refuge.  i knew something had happened to jessie.  i just knew.  so when i split everyone up into small groups to process some of the material on safe people, safe communities from down we go i had to make a decision.  do i wait until i wrap up my presentation in a neat & tidy bow and pretend like something bad didn’t happen, or do i listen to the message and open what somehow i knew was going to be a flood of pain?  i knew i couldn’t wait & i listened to the message in the hallway.

it felt like my pericardium burst completely and my heart was going to stop.

Continue Reading…

About four years ago, a wheelchair entered our home and all our lives changed dramatically.  It was rather ironic, really, because for my husband and I and three of our children, the wheelchair was simply another adaptive tool added to an already full toolbox used to meet the needs of our unique family.  For my oldest daughter, Anna, it represented a restraint.  She hates wheelchairs, having spent nearly two months confined to one while wearing a body cast during surgery recovery.  Like her younger sister, Anna has a disability, but she is an ambulator, not a chair user, and her prosthetic leg helps her achieve complete independence and nearly all the athletic goals she sets.  She hates the stares, the pity and all that comes with wheelchairs.  I hate the back-breaking lifting of it into and out of our van, up over bumps and the inevitable step or staircase that always seems to be in the way.

But for our youngest, Alyona, that little pink wheelchair represented liberation.  Having just recently been adopted out of an orphanage in southern Ukraine, it was Aly’s first wheelchair.  She was a scooter and crawler at the orphanage, as she did at our home at first. Within days she found a  Rubbermaid container that she could sit in and slide easily about our hardwood floors.  In her box, she glided around the first floor of our house as the rest of us went about getting adjusted to this new little, loud, brilliant and physically dependent child.  After going through all the mandatory testing, purging of parasites and tuberculosis, adjusting to new sleeping patterns, culture shock, beginning attachment and learning to speak English, it was time to address her physical disabilities.  And, so to the list of health care providers, we added a rehab doctor.

From that point on, things changed and it was all because of the wheelchair.  Our first run in with a rehab doctor and her team did not go well, and yielded a year long struggle proving to her and her staff that I was right and they were wrong:  Aly didn’t need a $35,000 power wheelchair that weighed over 350 lbs and posed a risk to all the other children she was around.  She was able to do much more than they anticipated, and without ever giving her a chance to try a manual chair, they submitted paperwork to our insurance stating her “medical need” for the expensive and high tech chair.  I argued that they didn’t know it was necessary because she hadn’t been given a chance to try the simpler road. Yet, rather than admitting they might be wrong and that they should at least let the child try a manual chair, they accused me of denial.  Insults ensued, and climaxed with accusations as to my callousness as a mother who wouldn’t get the absolute best wheelchair (one that would have cost our family $65,000 in co pays, ramps and the custom built van large enough to cart it and our seven member family around) for her poor daughter, who was most certainly, in their words, destined for a life of ongoing therapy and intervention. 

Didn’t care?  If only those accusing me had understood the depth of the pain that I felt over Aly’s losses, how I would gladly amputate my own legs and give them to her, if only that would solve anything.  If only they could see what she could do – a four-year-old so brilliant she was teaching herself to read English within a year of first speaking the language – rather than simply see her weakness.  But they didn’t and for the first time as a parent, I was looking like I not only didn’t know how to parent, but that I was actually medically negligent.

Being subversive by nature, my reaction was to purchase her a little hot pink manual chair off of Ebay for $150.  She was wheeling around our house from the first night my husband pieced the chair together, obviously not needing the behemoth that they had told our insurance was “medically necessary”.   We requested the addition of a new rehab doctor onto her team, and  I gladly let Aly wheel into her next rehab appointment. She acquiesced with not only some spins, but also by popping wheelies. I must admit, I enjoyed watching her “team” of specialists eat crow while I suddenly went from medically-neglectful-mom to mom-of-the year, who had championed against the odds in defense of her daughter’s abilities. 

Continue Reading…

On May 12^th 2010, my Mom passed away. Her name was Elsa. She is the one who taught me in the ways of God and service to others. She helped me to find my own way to talk to and of God. The cancer was diagnosed as breast cancer stage 4 with metastasized bone cancer. I wrote the following reflection the day we took her into the hospital for her cancer treatment.

There I was, standing in front of a crucifix. Interestingly, I was not in a Church or other religious place. I was standing in line to pay for my mom’s medical care and cancer treatment in a hospital in Guatemala City. The place was not pretty, so to speak. It was not the kind of place where one wants to spend a beautiful summer morning. Sick suffering people and the smell of disinfectant solution in the air merged with people’s faces, fear and despair like in a surreal apocalyptic vision. The paradoxes of life started clashing with each other inside my mind, and the suffering reflected in the face of the crucified Jesus was the perfect sign of anguish f or the situation. For a moment I felt like time was stopping and that life was on pause for a few seconds, and my thoughts started spinning around in my mind. Nothing seemed to make sense at all. All the things I was taught to believe in were not making sense at all. My Mom was in a hospital fighting for her life.

Continue Reading…

As a relatively new student in the Street Psalms Intensives, I hadn’t run into much in regard to ministry to the disabled or children, so I was surprised to be assigned reading that directly related to the ministry I have embraced.  However, in the article “The Children of Freetown,” I saw much of myself, sadly enough, in the mistakes Matthew Mirones unintentionally committed in a context very near to my heart.  

Yannis Kontos / Polaris

The article, found in the January 13, 2003 edition of The New Yorker, tells the story of  Matthew Mirones, a prosthetist from New York, who was moved to action by a photo essay of amputees in Freetown Sierra Leone. The high number of amputees was due to a brutal civil war that resulted in the tearing up of not only the country, but literally the limbs of thousands of its citizens including children.  As a prosthetist, he understood that he had the ability to help these children and adults and devised a plan to help many of these victims.  He worked to bring a handful of child amputees to the US in order to fit them with prostheses that would give them the ability to live a normal life.  Then, he planned to send those children back to Sierra Leone as what he saw as “beacons of hope” to the amputees still there. 
Continue Reading…

Joshua Station is a transitional housing ministry for homeless families in Denver. For Holy Week, our friends Penny Salazar and Kathy Escobar set up an interactive prayer experience in one of the rooms of this converted motel. It includes scripture readings, poetry, places to write prayers. It also includes a pile of coals and ashes, a bucket of dirt, and a door in the middle of the room – each item designed to help us interact with the various aspects of the story upon which Holy Week is built.

Penny and Kathy created this space because they knew that the people of Joshua Station, who live with the daily pain of deep poverty, needed to be invited to bring their heartache before God as part of the experience of Holy Week.

For Saturday, they created a “wailing wall,” where people could write out their prayers of lament. Next to the wailing wall, Penny and Kathy placed three placards, each with thoughts for Holy Saturday – the “in-between” day.

Continue Reading…