Driving Forward

The hand written note is in my purse. Careful penmanship, broken English, creative spelling, one clear message: "Please, can I borrow money." Now, this is a daily event in our lives, and we have a system for loaning money that works for us, in the Zambian context. But this particular note, from someone we love and trust, asks for a large amount of money. A lot more than we have ever loaned. It has been on my mind all morning. What is the faithful response?

The funds are to be used for driver's training and a driving license; with this certification, Elias can serve as a driver, dramatically increasing his income potential. This will allow him to plan for the future, to create sustainability in his life, to augment his salary and feed his family. It is an investment in Elias, in his potential, and in the lives of his little boy, his young wife, his future children. Ultimately, it is an investment I know that we will make. We believe in Elias, and we believe that God is at work in his life.

Elias is the young man I wrote about in the post "Broken Down" in February. He is the father of little Victor Phiri, who died three months ago, a one and a half year old child. In the months since Victor's death, Elias has mourned and struggled. But he has not given up. And today, receiving the letter from him, the request for a loan, the plans for his future, I know that he is able to take one step forward. He is going to continue to be a father, a husband, a man of faith and hope. He is going to believe in his future.

It is not something I can understand; I don't know how you move forward, having lost a child, having lost a part of yourself. I am not sure I have the faith to endure that kind of pain, and trust in a future that is anything but agony. But Elias has this, and I am honored to have the opportunity to invest in his life, to invest in his family, to invest in his hope.

In small and large ways, we all face loss, pain, challenge. We all come to places where we want to fall down, to stop, to give up. We all have times when we don't want to move forward, where we are stuck, where we are broken down. But Elias is taking driver's training, Elias is working on getting a license, Elias is going to move forward into a future where God is present, where love will win. I hope that we can do that, too. To trust in a future that is infused with the presence of God.

Anne Lamott tells this story in her book, Operating Instructions:

“I have a friend name Anne, this woman I’ve known my entire life, who took her two-year-old up to Tahoe during the summer. They were staying in a rented condominium by the lake. And of course, it’s such a hotbed of gambling that all the rooms are equipped with these curtains and shades that block out every speck of light so you can stay up all night in the casinos and then sleep all morning. One afternoon she put the baby to bed in his playpen in one of these rooms, in the pitch-dark, and went to do some work. A few minutes later she heard her baby knocking on the door from inside the room, and she got up, knowing he’d crawled out of his playpen. She went to put him down again, but when she got to the door, she found he’d locked it. He had somehow managed to push in the little button on the doorknob. So he was calling to her, 'Mommy, Mommy,' and she was saying to him, 'Jiggle the doorknob, darling,' and of course he didn’t speak much English—mostly he seemed to speak Urdu. After a moment, it became clear to him that his mother couldn’t open the door, and the panic set in. He began sobbing. So my friend ran around like crazy trying everything possible...calling the rental agency where she left a message on the machine, calling the manager of the condominium where she left another message, and running back to check in with her son every minute or so. And there he was in the dark, this terrified little child. Finally she did the only thing she could, which was to slide her fingers underneath the door, where there was a one-inch space."

"She kept telling him over and over to bend down and find her fingers. Finally somehow he did. So they stayed like that for a really long time, on the floor, him holding onto her fingers in the dark. He stopped crying. She kept wanting to call the fire department or something, but she felt that contact was the most important thing. She started saying, 'Why don’t you lie down, darling, and take a little nap on the floor?' and he was obviously like, 'Yeah, right, Mom, that’s a great idea, I’m feeling so nice and relaxed.' So she kept saying, 'Open the door now,' and every so often he’d jiggle the knob, and eventually, after maybe half an hour, it popped open."

"I keep thinking of that story, how much it feels like I’m the two-year-old in the dark and God is the mother and I don’t speak the language. She could break down the door if that struck her as being the best way, and ride off with me on her charger. But instead, via my friends and my church and my shabby faith, I can just hold onto her fingers underneath the door. It isn’t enough, and it is.”

I don't understand why Elias lost his son, why it is hard for him to feed his family, why there is so much loss here. But I do feel like God's fingers are slid underneath closed doors, and that somehow, we get the strength to jiggle the knob every once in a while, and sometimes, those doors open, and we step out of the dark, scary room, into the light of love and hope and joy. There are ways forward, there are doors that will one day open, and in the meantime, there is a God, offering us her hand through gaps in the darkness, inviting us to hold on, to trust, to wait upon the Lord.

Elias is going to go to classes and hopefully get his driver's license. He is going to jiggle that doorknob, and move forward, trusting that God will see him through. He has felt that touch underneath the doorway, and he knows that he is not alone. And as he drives forward, in faith and hope, he inspires me to do the same. Whatever the pain, large or small, we can feel that God's hand is touching us in the darkness, and as we keep trying to jiggle that doorknob, we can trust that at some point it will open, and the light and love and peace of God will flood through.