Sheila

Sheila and Grandson
Photo by Bgrace

"Death lays bare what really matters, and in this way becomes your judge."  Henri Nouwen

I've been writing about Sheila the last couple days, getting ready for the presentation on the 14th. 
I've been thinking about her.
The words meek, sweet, sympathetic, deferent come to my mind when I remember her.
And ache, definitely the word ache. 
As a friend of mine said once, "There's a pinch in her face."  It's what you see when her smile doesn't cover the pain in her soul.
Her list of grievances is not unlike many women in Swaziland.  Husband contracts AIDS, either because he slept with a prostitute or took another wife.  I can't say which would be worse.  In either case, the result is the same.  Death passes from his body to hers.  He is no longer around to provide and she must carry the weight of responsibility for their children in a weakening condition.  Well, not all of their children.  Her daughter is already dead.  I do not know how the young girl contracted the disease.  It is possible she was married, or perhaps she got pregnant from a local boy, or from a teacher trading sex for school fees.  I do not want to consider the possibility of incest because then I have to think about an even greater grief for Sheila, but I know now that it is very common. 
The daughter left a son for Sheila to care for.  He is only nine months old, so the newness and rawness of this all stares me in the face.  So do the faces of her other four children.
The tragedy of it all doesn't turn away from my gaze, but it is not what I see most clearly. 

What I see when I look into Sheila's eyes is what the Beatitudes look like in flesh.
Her focus does not rest on her sufferings, though I know she must be aware of this wicked war of wounds against her spirit.
Her focus is on finding a way to provide dry shelter and work and food for her children, so they can care for themselves and for each other when she is no longer a presence in their world.
She is what blessedness looks like in the face of catastrophe.  A picture of true dignity that evil has determined to desecrate and yet has had no effect on lessening it's stature because it cannot touch the source of her nobility.

"Your questions, 'Do you love me?' and 'Do I have to die?' are deeply connected...

Love is stronger than death."  Henri Nouwen

As I read Scripture to her and watched her face warm with love for the Lord she pleads with and waits upon to help her, I knew there was much she had to say to a world worried with much lesser things.
Her path had given her every reason to claim she had been forsaken by God.  Instead, her witness was  a faith that transcended suffering, that transcended the pains and losses of this world.
Somehow despite everything she has endured she has a trust that God could answer her prayers for her children.  Her greatest treasure is eternity in her heart--the love of God and for God that tragedy cannot part her from.
Maybe I can help build you a dry room for your kids, Sheila, and feed them after you are gone. 
But what you can give them is a treasure most of us don't carry in our chests. 
Teach us Sheila.  Teach us what really matters.