Brokeness and Restoration

I was able to hang out with one of our students from this year's school before I left Costa Rica for the Holidays. We spent a day together hanging out, catching up, talking about our presents, past months (she stayed in Costa Rica to do her outreach … so except for one brief time of passing…. I hadn’t seen her for about 7 months or more). She is doing amazing and I am so excited. Honestly, students like her, are why we are here doing this school. Both her and I discussed how miraculously God brought her to this school. She learned about the school and applied for it within 2 weeks of when the school began in January. She gave up her job security and came to take the school. Really, it was all God’s perfect timing for her life. The lecture phase was hard for her. Almost from the first week on, she struggled. We discussed topics such as child abuse and protection. She was abused in her past and during this time all the memories and trauma she experienced, that she assumed she had put away in her memories, God was bringing back to the surface and she was struggling and really, in ways drowning in the pain again and re-experiencing it.

When she started opening up to us as staff and the other students, she was at a point of drowning. To be quite honest, we felt incapable and unsure as to how to deal with the pain and suffering she was experiencing. Though this was so horrible for her, fortunately, God’s timing is perfect even in our pain and suffering. He knew exactly what she needed. We had just made some contacts with a local organization called Viva and there we had met a counselor who specials in child abuse, and so we put her in contact with our friend at Viva. This meeting between our student and our contact at Viva, became the breaking point and the start of a process of healing for our student. She had many long and hard months to come, yet God is soo faithful. Seeing her yesterday, clarified that God is using the school to see beautiful women and children restored to their healed and rightful place in your kingdom. Even more, in the case of our student. She has not only gone through remarkable transformation; from unbelievable pain, suffering and depression, to excitement about how God has healed her and is continuing to do so.

She is confidant that God will use her in the future for other children and women who have suffered, as she has. God brought about so many things to provide for her in this time of healing, so many miracles. Let me see if I can remember some of them she told me about yesterday: the school was in the perfect timing…. she was forced to deal with this injustice in her life, to no longer ignore this pain and suffering and was able to finally get real help. She was handed the courage and tools to take her case to court. She just met the deadline, within less than a month of the 8 year statute of limitations, in order to put this case before court and end the cycle of abuse for others in contact with the abuser. She was in a safe environment not only with the help she was able to get but in working her internship with Viva and also living in a safe environment on base. Now, God is providing for her again financially. Her biological father came back into her life during this process and has been providing for her ever since, even to the point of paying for her to go to University, housing, food, living expenses, etc.

She said emotionally and spiritually she feels so at home at the base and with the many individuals who have loved her during this very hard process over the past year, i.e. as her family turned against her. Even in that, God is restoring her family through our student’s testimony and ending the cycle of abuse for so many in her family and even being a witness and testimony of God’s love for us all and His unwillingness for us to remain in brokenness and suffering from the injustices of this world.