Writing and Blogging | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Toxicity of Unexpressed Creativity Leads to Physical and Mental Illness, and Addictions

I love this startling chapter “The Unlived Life,” from Steven Pressfield’s great book, “The War of Art.”

The rest of this post is a quote from this prescient chapter:

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever resolved on a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever felt a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be?

Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

One night I was layin’ down,
I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama.
I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie.

‘Cause it’s in him
and it’s got to come out.
—John Lee Hooker, ‘Boogie Chillen.”

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease and erectile dysfunction. To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God (and I do) you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is resistance. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of resistance arrayed against it. We are not alone if we are mowed down by Resistance. Millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us.

Have you heard this story? Woman learns she has cancer, six months to live. Within days she quits her job, resumes the dream of studying classical Greek she gave up to raise a family. Women’s friends think she’s crazy; she herself has never been happier. There’s a postscript. Woman’s cancer goes into remission.

Is that what it takes? Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance? Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its existence?

How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumours and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip and compulsive cell-phone use simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us.

If tomorrow morning, by some stroke of magic, every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic violence would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraines and road rage.

Look into your heart. Unless I’m crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And are you no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow? You think Resistance isn’t real? Resistance will bury you.”

The Prophet Speaks Words Before They are True: Peace! (A Guest Post by Heather Caliri)

By Anita Mathias

I was so pleased when Heather Caliri, author of Dancing Back to Jesus, offered me this beautiful guest post. Thanks so much, Heather!

simeon_1024 Bedtime went awry for no very good reason. I was done after a long day. Or: I decided it was a long day, and absolved myself from using kind words and polite questions. As my kids pulled on pajamas and brush teeth, I found myself yelling at someone taking too long to brush their teeth.

Both children asleep and still, I went into my bedroom to quiet my simmering impatience. Settling onto my bed with a pillow at my back, I pulled over the Book of Common Prayer and opened to the devotions for the close of day.

I read the prayers every night. I knew what was coming, and my chest clenched. I hate saying words I can’t live up to. That night, the disconnect was a heavy black underline.

I read the words out loud:

Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised.
for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see.

It’s the Song of Simeon, taken from Luke 2. One of the less-familiar Nativity stories, it takes place when the infant Jesus is brought to the temple. Simeon, a prophet that God promised would see the Messiah before he died, comes across the family and praises God.

But as I said them, I thought: Where is my peace? Where is my freedom? Have I seen the Savior today, or closed my eyes to Him? On nights like this Jesus seems hazy and far away, even though his commands are plain: Go and do likewise. Do unto others. Take up your cross.

Simeon’s affirmation needled me. The words tasted of failure.

I know I’m unworthy. But there’s an unworthiness that reaches up to Jesus to be pulled out of the water, and unworthiness that sinks to the bottom of the lake.

The song made me sink.

It’s a pattern I see over and over in my faith, in my pursuit of spiritual disciplines, in my reaching out to God. Sometimes my brokenness brings me to him. Sometimes it does the opposite.

Why does knowledge of my sickness send me running from the one who could heal me?

I read Simeon’s words again because I sensed I needed to be obedient. I needed to say them and ache for healing.

I have seen the Savior, I said. I have seen the Savior.

Here’s what my heart echoed back as I spoke Simeon’s song aloud:

The prophet speaks words before they are true. She is incarnating the possibility. But she lets God do the work of bringing into being.

It is hard for me to believe this no matter how much I know it: God is doing the work for me.

God is providing the peace when I am past the point of feigning it. God is opening the jail doors when I am despairing my captivity. The Savior is, as St. Patrick said, under me, over me, through me, around me, and beside me even when I am blind to His presence.

And what of this peace that Simeon celebrates? It is not the kind we’d see in a soft-focus catalog. I’ve been reading Luke 2 more closely, and seeing this:

Simeon is waiting to die. T.S. Eliot writes that his life is like a feather on the back of a hand, waiting for a breeze to blow it away.

The blessing he gives Mary and Joseph is an unsettling one: their son will cause upheaval. People will speak against him.

And for them: souls pierced by swords.

I imagine them tasting that oddly bittersweet blessing with babe in arms and wondering, again, what they have gotten themselves into.

Here is the truth: my children often pierce my soul. So does my behavior towards them. Reaching out to the Savior who is hazy and clear pierces me, God pierces me, over and over.

It is because I am pierced that I am looking for Him in the first place.

The peace I am given is just right for this complicated world, just right for a mixed-up, broken heart. A heart that waits for God to give the peace, provide the freedom, and make the words come true.

I have seen the Savior, I declare. I am free to go in peace as you have promised.

heather_pic Heather Caliri is a writer and mom from San Diego. Two years ago, she started saying little yeses to faith, art, and life. The results shocked her. Get her free e-book, Dancing Back to Jesus: Post-perfectionist faith in five easy verbs, on her blog, A Little Yes.

Playdates with God: Because All the World is a Wonderland: A Guest Post by Laura Boggess

By Anita Mathias

Laura Boggess’s writing and spirituality is as outrageously beautiful as she is. I’ve loved reading about her magical playdates with God on her blog –with some envy, both for the joy and freshness of her spirituality, and for the loveliness of the idea.

I am so excited that Laura is on my blog today, telling us more about how she began and continues with her spiritual practice of playdates with God. Welcome Laura!

rain_and_books_4_blog Last night after dinner the electricity went off. A white sky illuminated the night outside, silhouetting our usual, and I stared at my laptop in the dark…no internet connection… the screen an island of light in the room. Our two boys clamored—wound up by darkness, and excitement pulsed as their daddy lit candles and checked the weather on his iPhone.

We sat in the hush and listened to the wind blow the deck furniture around. It was late—after ten—so I tucked protesting boys in with a candle gently flickering—thinking of Little House on the Prairie and savoring the play of the warm glow on their still young faces.

I returned to the couch in the dark.

We sat in silence, my man and I; listened to driving rain turn to gentle patter, watched the play of lightning on hills in the distance. For once, no hum of air conditioner, no mindless buzz of refrigerator, dishwasher still in silence. All of our daily companions closed their eyes in this gauzy darkness.

There was only the soft ticking of the mantle clock keeping time with the faint strumming of droplets colliding with window glass, only to slide down and lose form in a streaky stream.

We giggled a little at our loss, wondered how did they do it? with no electricity…only talk to spend. We marveled at work-filled days and talk-filled evenings and fell in to silence.

I closed my eyes in the dark and felt God sitting beside me.

Silence feels good to me. I find it by sitting still. By looking deeper into what is already here.

Always a solitary child, that’s me. I can fall into His arms in the quiet and never desire to leave. All my life this is where I have rested. Safe from jabbing words of others; hidden from the wounding talk.

I know it’s not that way for everyone. And lately, besieged by life and fraught with hope, I’ve been wondering, Is there another way? Because sometimes life doesn’t bend for this slowing down. Sometimes it takes a power outage for me to be still and listen.

God is always the same, yes, this I know. But I have also come to learn that He loves to mix things up. He understands the human tendency to grow stale when patterns are established. He loves surprises. He likes to keep our love fresh and new. This year has been a crazy mixed up year for finding God for me. My years of early morning quiet time suddenly ceased to feel intimate. For the first time in years I found myself falling asleep with my cheek pressed to the dining room floor at 5 a.m. Saturated.

It was time for something new.

I began to step out of my comfort zone. To explore new ways of praying. Once a week I try to do something new with God. I call these my Playdates with God. Funny how, trying this once a week has opened my eyes to finding the new in the old. Like my daily runs. I’ve been running since I was thirteen, but lately…I find God when I run. I feel Him in my legs, in my breath, in the acceleration of my beating heart. He meets me in the sky and the trees and the way the light changes colors on the horizon.

This morning when I ran, the storm was still fresh on the sidewalk. Fallen branches and stray leaves littered the street. The creek was rushing its banks and the smell of muddy water rose dense into the air around me. A handful of black crows perched on the utility wires above me, caw, caw, caw…

As my feet pounded the pavement, I remembered a poem a dear friend sent me. In it, she tells me that I am birdsong, and those words have lifted me on the darkest of days. My heart soars as I imagine music in my stride. And as I go on, I am lifted into its melody, and a new poem takes wing:

I fly away
singing—
flutter my
wings
through misty
windows
in the sky;
dip fingertips
in morning dew-
cups, silky
petals collect
evening honey,
and offer this
sweet frieze to
me in the golden
shimmer of
dawn. I am
free. I am…
birdsong.

I grow when I look for the Holy in the not usual way. God loves for me to seek after Him in wild and beautiful ways. Writing poetry doesn’t seem so crazy a way to pray. Nor does running.

He’s there. He’s in it all.

Where do you find God in your day-to-day life?

Leafwood headshot 023_smlr_autocorr

Laura Boggess is crazy in love with Jesus. And after many years of the try-hard life she is finally learning to accept that He loves her too. A recovering list-maker worn out from trying to earn grace, Laura is now stepping into Christ’s invitation to come to Him like a little child—with open hands, surrendered to grace.

Laura Boggess has an M.A. in clinical psychology and works in a medical rehabilitation hospital—helping patients and their families cope with traumatic diagnoses such as brain injury, spinal cord injury, and stroke. She believes in the healing power of story and often uses storytelling in therapy. She is the author of two books in the Wings of Klaio series, a Christian fiction series for teens. Watch for her new book Playdates with God: Because All the World is a Wonderland, to be released in the spring of 2014.

Laura is active in the women’s ministries at her church and is a regular speaker at churches throughout her region. She is a contributing editor at The High Calling (thehighcalling.org) and blogs at The Wellspring (http://lauraboggess.com). Laura lives in a little valley in West Virginia with her husband, Jeff, and their two sons. She is passionate about sharing Jesus and stories and loves a happy ending.

Platinum and Rubies: In which a Story can Change the World (A guest post by Deidra Riggs)

By Anita Mathias

I am delighted that blogger Deidra Riggs is here to grace my space today. Welcome, Deidra!

It happens nearly every time I’m in a crowd. The Jazz Festival downtown, a train platform, a concert or conference in a massive arena. When walking through crowds at the airport in Chicago, or San Antonio, or Denver, or New York, or wherever it is my travels have taken me I hear myself think, “All of these people…all of these thousands of people, and I’ve never met a single one.” If my husband is with me, I say it out loud.

“What?” he asks me, trying to maneuver his roller bag through the sea of feet in pumps and platform shoes and patent-leather Stacy Adams or plain old flip-flops. Everyone. Going somewhere.

“Oh, you know,” I say, “the same old thing. God knows every single person here, and I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

“Yep,” he’ll say. “He does.”

On the trips I take solo, walking through those crowds, I often get an overwhelming sense of just how much love God has for us, and how much He has invested in every single story.

Other times, I find myself at a stoplight in the town where I live. I’m waiting for the light to turn green, wondering what to cook for dinner, when someone walks in front of my car, crossing the street from one corner to the other.

I look at the way she holds her purse, or the way his wallet makes an impression in the back pocket of his Levi’s 501 jeans, or the way she flicks the ashes from her cigarette, or the way the collar of his plaid shirt lies flat against the nape of his neck, and — just like that — I’m knocked off-kilter by the stories I don’t know. I ask God to keep her safe, and hold him close, and shore up their stories before the calendar turns too many pages.

:::

I eat a giant hamburger, and then go back for one-half more because the guy in charge of the grill has outdone himself. Overhead, two airplanes fly in formation, and in the yard two of the young men kick a soccer ball back and forth. It’s a church cook-out, and this group is still getting to know each other. They are young — part of that age group researchers say are leaving the church. I’m all for research. But this is real life, and these are real people with real stories to tell.

We eat grilled jalepeno peppers stuffed with cheese, and jell-o salad with banana slices suspended inside, and we chew on asparagus right from the grill. There are introductions between those who have not yet met, and I wipe up the drink I spilled on the patio. When the last brownie has been eaten, the group moves inside to sit in overstuffed couches beneath the ceiling fan.

Tonight, the plan is for each of us to tell our story. There are ten of us, and we are told we can pass when it’s our turn. No pressure. No obligation. But no one passes. And the sun has dropped below the rooftops of the house across the street when the last story has been told. And I feel as I’ve been given a gift like rubies in a platinum ring and I want to slip it around my finger — the finger with the blood line that runs straight to my heart.

:::

Across the table, my friend is helping me get ready for a speech I have to give. “When a speaker says, ‘Let me tell you a story,’ what happens to the audience?” she asks me. I nod at her. She puts her elbows on the table in front of her, and then she puts the fingers of her left hand into the palm of her right hand.

I get it.

“Stories are so powerful,” I answer. “They draw us right in.”

“Just like Jesus…and all His stories,” my friend answers.

And now I’m nodding because I really do get it.

Be generous with your story, I hear in my heart. Or maybe it’s my soul. It’s that very same place that spills over when I’m in the airport or sitting in my car, waiting for the light to turn green, or under a ceiling fan with a gift of platinum and rubies dancing in my ears.

Your story? It is platinum and rubies. Your story can change the world.

Deidra Riggs is a writer and speaker. She serves as managing editor at TheHighCalling.org, and is a monthly contributor to incourage.me. As president and owner of JumpingTandem, she invites people to the table by producing retreats, conversations, and other events designed to inspire individuals to pursue the dream(s) God has uniquely designed for them. Deidra also facilitates conversations which encourage churches and church leaders to increase their understanding of different races, cultures, and ethnicities. You can connect with Deidra at her blog, deidrariggs.com. Deidra is married to Harry Riggs. They are the parents of two adult children, and the happy renters of an empty nest.

Learning to Listen: A Guest Post by Diana Trautwein

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured to host Diana Trautwein. Listen up as she teaches us to listen well!

Many years ago, one of my dearest friends pinpointed a particular problem of mine: I wasn’t really listening when she talked to me.

Oh, I was physically present, with my body turned towards her, ‘hearing’ her words. But I was not truly listening. She told me that I seldom made eye contact and seemed to be constantly distracted by everything else that was going on around us.

Ouch. Her words stung, as the truth so often does.

After a minute or two of denial, I had to admit that she was right on target. I had this habit of trying to multi-task when someone was talking to me.

I too often chose that time to scan the room, or the patio, or the restaurant — wherever the conversation was happening — to be sure I wasn’t missing something important going on around me.

As if the person in front of me was not important enough.

Or, I would busily scan an invisible list in my head, checking off tasks that needed to be done.

As if life is all about how much we can do, accomplish or perform.

Almost always, I found myself so concerned about my own response to whatever I was hearing, that I had little interior space to simply receive the words of another as the gifts they were.

As if my words, my stories, my experiences were of more intrinsic value than the other person’s.

I was there. But. . . I wasn’t. Physical presence? Yes, assuredly. Emotional presence? Not so much.

For most of my life, I have been a busy person, involved in numerous activities and commitments. From family to church to philanthropic groups to running a small business from my home, to attending seminary, to working in the parish setting — I’ve kept my plate full.

My friend’s words came when I was a seminary student, still managing a floral business, and also serving as a pastoral intern at the church we both attended.

I was over-extended, over-tired and emotionally overdrawn. The well was dry.

Listening, really listening, to anyone became increasingly difficult for me to do. Something had to give, priorities needed to be realigned, and I desperately needed to learn what it meant to pay attention to the lives and stories of other people, most especially people near and dear to me.

At about the same time, I began to learn more about the spiritual disciplines and practices of the Christian church, both ancient and contemporary. And it was here that I began to find my way to the center, the center of myself and the center of my faith.

It was here that I began to learn how to listen.

Every single book I read, prayer retreat I attended, or class I took pointed me in the same direction: learning to still myself from the inside out. Let me hasten to add that I still do not do this perfectly — far from it. But I am on the road, learning as I go.

Along the way, I have learned to talk less and to listen more. The practices of centering prayer, lectio divina, breath prayers, the Jesus Prayer, the exercises of St. Ignatius — each of these and all of these help to point me in the direction of stillness, silence and attentiveness.

Over the course of the last twenty years, I have discovered deep reservoirs of grace and compassion that are available to me if I will take the time to dip my toes into the waters of my own baptism. And then those same gospel gifts are passed along through me as I take what I’m learning into conversations, email correspondence and spiritual direction sessions.

Listening became an important part of my own spiritual journey, so much so that I began to prayerfully discern God’s call for me to enter spiritual direction and then to offer it. Last year, I completed three years of study and practice, and now meet monthly with several people. Together, we sit in the presence of the Holy Spirit and listen to how God has been at work in their lives since last we met.

And, by the grace of God, I no longer scan the room, peruse an invisible list of tasks, or assemble a clever response to whatever I’m being told.

Instead, I listen, with my ears, with my eyes and with my heart.

Diana R.G. Trautwein

Married to her college sweetheart for over 45 years, Diana is always wondering about things. She answers to Mom from their three adult kids and to Nana from their 8 grandkids, ranging in age from 3 to 22. For 17 years, after a mid-life call to ministry, she answered to Pastor Diana in two churches where she served as Associate. Since retiring at the end of 2010, she spends her time working as a spiritual director and writes twice weekly on her own blog, JustWondering, monthly at A Deeper Family, occasionally for Prodigal Magazine, and soon, occasionally for She Loves Magazine. For as long as she can remember, Jesus has been central to her story and the church an extension of her family. Not that either church or family is exactly perfect . . . but then, that’s what makes life interesting, right?

In which Creative Blocks Crumble, and I am Set Free.

By Anita Mathias

I went on a retreat at the Harnhill Centre last month with low expectations, and it proved life-changing in the area of food.

The another amazing healing and release I experienced at the Harnhill Centre for Christian Healing was in the creative arena.

I have had a couple of tries at doing book proposals for the memoir I am writing of my Indian Catholic childhood at adolescence. I am from a small, largely Catholic coastal town, Mangalore, converted by the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century. I went to boarding school in the Himalayas, run by German and Irish missionary nuns, where I was rebellious and an atheist, and after a religious conversion, I impulsively joined Mother Teresa, wanting to become a nun, lasting 14 months.

I found writing book proposals very difficult, and sweated blood doing them, as my father used to say about writing letters. Because my literary writing is just that, literary, I used to despair of converting something like a book of paintings, or a book of poems into a chapter by chapter outline, a necessary book marketing tool.

But unless I learn the art of writing a good book proposal, I will not have a conventional literary career, my book in bookstores for impulse buyers.

And I want and need one.

* * *

So I tried to do a book proposal, and froze up again as I had in the past, despairing of adequately representing all that richness in a page.

Somewhere, in the process of writing the proposal, I moved from healthy striving, which Brene Brown in Daring Greatly describes as being work-focused, asking “How can I improve the work?” to perfectionism, being “Other-focused” asking “What will they think?”

We discuss this, and I am actually in tears of frustration about this writing block.

And Gary, the South African counsellor, asks, “What does God think about your book?”

I think of my book, chapter by chapter, and I can see God smile. He remembers the richness of the life I was describing. He was right there during it, and he likes the way I am remembering it, celebrating it, re-enjoying it. “God likes my book,” I say happily. “He likes it!”

I suddenly flash back to a beautiful memory. A Swedish YWAM team had come to Minneapolis where we lived in 1991-2, and performed a passionate, graceful dance interpretation of a worship song: “He’s the Lord of creation, and the Lord of my heart; Lord of the land and the sea.”

Their dance was worship. And I saw my writing as a dance of worship. I will worship my Lord with words dancing on the page.

* * *

And when I came home that changed my approach to my book.

I could write more happily, fluently, confidently, writing in the river of God’s power, that river flowing and coursing through me. When I am stressed, I slow down and ask that river to flow through me again.

I forgive whom I have to forgive. I repent of what I have to repent. I want NOTHING blocking the flow of the river of God’s life into me.

When I wrote on my own, I wrote the best I could. Now I write with Jesus’ power in me, with some of the mind of Christ, chatting to Jesus as I write, and knowing he likes what I am describing of the life he has given me, and when I have finished, he will say to me, as we say to our toddlers who have done their very best, very beautiful art, “It is very good.”

I am trying to create beauty, and need to focus on that, not on the gate-keeper’s reactions. The block of fear and paralysis that I could not adequately represent the book in a book proposal has been lifted.

* * *

And, incidentally, part of my trouble with book proposals was that I did them with a bad attitude, resenting the time taken away from literary work by this career necessity.

I received an excellent piece of advice last month from Brandy: the way around the book proposal block is not to grudge the time and effort it takes to create one, but to think of it as art itself and so do it whole-heartedly.

I think blocks are caused by a lack of confidence, by a false belief that we cannot do what, of course, we can jolly well do. And by a fear of adverse judgement.

The prayer minister at Harnhill mentioned that blocks are caused when we cannot forgive ourselves or other people in the area in which we are blocked. Ooh, that’s another can of worms for me to open!!

A Shalom Blessing for Me (from Brandy Patterson Walker)

By Anita Mathias

I had an insightful Shalom session with life-coach Brandy Walker, and here’s a poem/blessing she wrote for me at the end of it. Lovely, isn’t it?

A Blessing for You and Your Book

Breathe, sweet Anita, and know that you
Are enough.
Just the way you are. Bright eyes. Kind smile. Warm heart.

The words in your soul are gifts to bless you and the rest of the world.
But
Even if you never shared them
You’d still be enough.

You would still be loved beyond measure,
More than you could ever fathom.

It’s okay to oversleep. To take a break.
To garden! It’s okay to cry.
Your mission is holy,
But it is not you.
You are enough.

So beautiful. So much more than words on a screen.
So much more than your number of your Twitter followers.

May this book be your joy.

May it give you deep pleasure to share your stories and
This marvelous history with all who are blessed to encounter it.
May you be able to let go of the grasping for perfect

And settle into the wonder of creative exploration.

May this book change lives and perspectives
And leave the world a little better than it was before you wrote it.
Even if there is a typo.

Or, especially if there is a typo!
May a little girl fall into its pages and
Dare to dream that she, too, can someday write a book of her own.

Image Credit

Why I have hope for the Democratic Republic of Congo ( A guest post from Christine Karumba of Tearfund)

By Anita Mathias

Jenny Barthow, Digital Producer at Tearfund recently emailed me about the current staggering level of conflict and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the deadliest conflict since the Second World War, yet largely ignored by the media,

I must admit my knowledge of events in the DRC hasn’t hugely moved beyond Barbara Kingsolver’s splendid The Poisonwood Bible, so am honoured to host this spiritual reflection from Christine Karumba, Tearfund’s Deputy Country Director for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Meme4

‘It was a horrible moment – I could never have imagined this day would arrive.’ This is Alice describing the day that she was raped. About this time last year, two strangers arrived in the field where Alice lives – she thought they were just visitors. As they came closer, she noticed they were carrying clubs. As well as the sense of shame and emotional trauma, Alice still suffers pain in her stomach and hip from the attack.

Alice is just one of nearly 4,000 women known by Tearfund partner Heal Africa to have experienced sexual violence last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fighting between rebels and government forces in the DRC is still causing suffering on a massive scale – particularly to women.

(photo credit: Richard Hanson/ Tearfund)

I could have been Alice or any of those 4,000 women. I experienced a life-changing moment when, a few years ago, I met another lady who had three times been a victim of rape. She was educated, had opportunities – she went to the same school as the future DRC ambassador to the United States. That’s what brought it home: meeting someone like who was, like me, born and raised in the DRC, with the potential and education I had – but whose life had been devastated by rape.

(photo credit: Richard Hanson/ Tearfund)

She was the most vulnerable woman I have ever met, she had no food and only the clothes she wore. I sat with her, listened to her, and felt her pain. For me, as a Christian, this was a wake-up call. I decided to stand up for women like her, share love with them and help them to change their lives. That’s why I still live and work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the most dangerous places on earth, because I want to help women like Alice, like the lady I met, to stand on their feet, earn an income and stand up for their own rights.

What I still find astonishing about people in the DRC is how they can still believe in peace and hope even though they don’t see any sign of it. It is challenging for me as someone who is educated, who grew up enjoying one decent meal a day to see people with little education or food achieving so much. People tell me they know something good will happen.

Through my previous work offering counselling and support to victims of rape and people traumatized by the conflict, I’ve found that when people – particularly women – are given opportunities they grab it – they look to the future determined to support their families and send their children to school.

Sometimes it’s hard to see the world like this, how people can believe and achieve great things with very little under such difficult circumstances. But, through my work, I have been forced to see it as they do. Because I have come to understand that the most important thing you can do is give opportunities.

Of course, not everyone begins with this self belief. Often people start off without any hope, believing that they cannot achieve anything on their own. That’s why, through our partners, we encourage people to be part of a group to share common challenges. People receive psychological support from others in the group who care for them, they pray together and support each other as day-by-day the wounds start to heal. It is a real blessing for me to witness this transformation.

I have hope for my country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, because I believe in the hope I see in the people. But we need to pray for more love. Ask God to give the leaders in my country more love in their hearts for others. Selfishness and greed is wreaking a terrible effect on people, on women like Alice. Pray that leaders reflect and ask themselves if they are here to live, love and leave a legacy. What legacy will I leave? We need more leaders in the DRC to embody Christ’s love for others. For the sake of Alice, for the thousands like her, and for everyone suffering in the DRC.

In this article, I used the pseudonym ‘Alice’ to protect the woman’s real identity.

Tearfund has launched an emergency appeal for the DRC to raise urgent funds and awareness. You can read more at www.tearfund.org/DRCongo.

Christine Karumba, Tearfund’s Deputy Country Director for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was born, lives and works in the DRC.