Living with 100 Sisters
(note: This article is from my wonderful friend and editor, Marianne Abel-Lipshutz)
There’s nothing new about becoming a Christian missionary in the 21st Century. The offer remains the same. Jesus still invites us to “Come, follow me” after more than two thousand years. The harsh reality of how to become a disciple hasn’t changed either. Scripture says simply, “You must die.” Die to our life, hate our family, leave our brothers, forsake our sisters, walk away from our sons and daughters, abandon our land and everything else and just, “Follow me.”
The prospect of such a reversal haunted me for years. I felt kin to the rich man who questioned Jesus about access to the kingdom, a place that appealed to both of us. That guy received instructions that still work today: sell everything, give to the poor, and “Follow me.” My life has indeed been rich, maybe similar to that man’s good life--a generous family, a spacious home, clear purposes, meaningful work, loving relationships, and natural beauty all around. I felt confused by a basic Christian principle: the rewards of living right and loving well have little actual value, even though they are blessings from God.
Maybe the rich guy in the Bible story made a different decision later in life, but in that moment he walked back home rather than follow Jesus empty-handed. I had done that many times, too, but God kept following me. Eventually I gave up trying to make sense of becoming a missionary. As I turned away from one family connection and place and then let the next ones slide by without grasping, I turned toward things and people that had previously been invisible. Becoming a new person is more than we can imagine from where we are.
Once I shifted my line of perspective, sacrifice took shape as a familiar norm. My Uncle Jim served as a monk in Ohio, teaching at inner city high schools for 55 years. He lived at a remove from the daily world, yet he was still emotionally invested in the people near him. Selfishly, even though we didn’t live nearby, I felt slighted as his niece and longed for his attention over the years. We both had to sacrifice my part in his life because he chose to follow Jesus unconditionally. Now my own family and friends might suffer for my service, regardless of their willingness or their faith journey.
Jesus encourages us to seek our place in the kingdom by imagining a camel slip through the eye of a needle. We can’t see how a camel or a human could get through, nor can we picture life on the other side. Who will we become when we leave everything behind? What happens to those who pass through the needle’s eye? Easier for the camel, Jesus added, and just as transformational. “Come, follow me” also means “Come into the vision I have for you alone.”
Check off your list of things as you forsake them for the kingdom: houses, brothers, sisters, parents, spouse, kids, lands. Our attachment to all this has to go. Even his disciples asked, “What then will we have?” One more promise in the uncluttered space between us and Jesus: you shall receive a hundredfold in this life, and life everlasting in the next. An astounding goodness can come from our choice to sacrifice what we love dearly for what we do not know.
I couldn’t have pictured a less likely room for revelation than a makeshift beauty salon. I had grown up with four brothers, hair that resisted curling, and a mother who was allergic to most makeup and jewelry. A beauty salon is foreign territory to me, a place I can visit but will never belong.
After a year serving at a children’s home in Guatemala, I joined a dozen women who helped 14 teen girls do their hair and makeup in an upstairs classroom for a Quinceañera fiesta on our campus. Our agency invested in this Latino coming-of-age celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday as a way to show the girls how valued they are as daughters of the King.
The girls flourished with the women’s pampering, trading their t-shirts and jeans for the garish colors of elaborate gowns. Some girls chose indigenous formal wear in the muted weaves of gold-laced, multi-colored patterns from their home counties. Bobby pins cluttered the floor. Taffeta shreds drifted to the corners. Tiny bottles of fingernail polish in glitter rainbow shades covered a desktop. Sisters and friends chatted and giggled, holding a mirror or waiting to see who was next. Excitement and anticipation crested in the moments before the event as each girl gathered her skirts and clunked down steep stairs in unfamiliar heels.
Who were we shaping these girls to be, inside and out, I wondered? They’d been rescued from bleak villages or the streets of the capital or the police station, girls whose princess dreams were smeared by horrific abuse, abandonment, and neglect. The pageantry of makeup and ballroom gowns seemed surreal compared to the lives they’d left behind. They too had died to who they were--whether they chose that death or not.
Who then will we be? I looked around that classroom with the girls and their attendants, astonished by God’s mercy. He gave us this unique chance to live these days together differently than we ever imagined. He put us with people we would never otherwise meet, doing things we wouldn’t choose on our own, feeling so deeply we don’t know how to process. And right before our very eyes we see dreams become real--dreams we forgot we once had. When Jesus asks us to experience the here and now with him, he calls us to vivid living. In his heart, we are genuine royalty, both powerful and pure, assured and alive.
I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister. Now I have a hundred sisters of all ages to be with, girls who want to braid my hair, give me hugs, ask me how I am, women who love me like they know me. “Never in a million years,” we say of dreams that can’t possibly come true, like a camel holding its breath to squeeze into the kingdom of God.
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