People need to be touched

I think. my shoulder is still wet from Debajeans hair and DanMike is in the next room singing to her. she's wrapped up in his quilt eating honey bunches of oats and her laundry is mixing in the next room. walked in drunk, maybe high, I never can tell, and the first thing she did was yank a hug from me, said she needed it real bad, and so I gave it. people need to be touched, I think. In the last half hour she has changed from a frantic woman to a woman at rest. it will not last, not unless Jesus enters her, but DM singing to her reminds me of David and King Saul and how the evil spirit within Saul would flee, just for a time, with David serenading. I think that is our job, really. to show people what it means to be at peace. they can then see that we contain something that is not of us. I want to braid more women's discolored hair just after a shower that they haven't had in weeks. after it, she crawled into the couch and I moved the hair off of her neck so she wouldn't be at cold and she scooted in right next to me, laid her wet head on my shoulder and rested. she needed to have human contact, which I think most of us have gotten away from. i think this is who Jesus is to us.

he makes me able to be a mother to someone double my age. that is the way it works. he makes us all things that we need to be at the time we need to be.

this morning I had bible study with my girls and I felt like a mother a sister a friend. the spirit was a live and working and beautiful. it's only because of Him that we start reading about the goats and the sheep of Matthew 25 and end up with a roomful of girls confessing they don't treat their parents and siblings with enough love. crying. making lists of ways to effectively change that. this week will be different. beautiful things will happen. I have loved watching these girls change into woman in the last few years. I have loved watching Marv become such a man, a man that he always was, but I have loved watching him embrace that person.

People are so strong in their tears. in their weaknesses. learning the way of Jesus' hands. When we do this, we learn to love. love can change the world, I believe that and I think all the girls left bible study today--I left-- realizing that we must be Jesus, we must treat others like they are Jesus and we must look for Jesus in every moment. seek him with the entirety of our hearts.

DebaJean is talking to herself in the next room. I believe that she continues to come back because God wants to change her and reveal his face through my face and my hands. Jen's hands. Don's hands. Marv and Joe's. Brad's. Chips. if that means braiding her hair and handing her a bowl of cereal or painting her toenails, or telling her what's upside down in her life: whatever it is. I'm in. it starts here.