Sofi's First Email Address

I have been given an incredible privilege: the ability to participate in human redemption and restoration. To step into their stories and be a witness to God's healing grace in their lives. Sometimes that takes the face of the extraordinary, but more often than not I've found that on the surface it looks surprisingly mundane.

One of the moms we work with has two daughters who have lived at the San Jose Children's Home for the past 7 years. While she has suffered from both depression and alcoholism, the main reason for why her girls do not live with her is because she does not have a consistent job. So a few days ago I went with her to a shop where they sell internet to browse through job postings on Mexico's version of Craig's List. After jotting down a couple that we would later call and look in to, I asked the mother to do something on the computer and realized that she had never used a computer mouse before.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with tenderness as I looked into the eyes of a 30 year old woman who gazed back at me with the trusting, eager expectation that school girls have towards their teachers. I showed her how to hold the mouse, how to click, how to scroll up and down the page. I wrote down instructions on how to look for jobs online, and we created her very first email account. I felt so touched that she would allow me to care for her in that way. It was a simple task, but it didn't feel simple--it was a reminder that everything matters. A reminder to choose gentleness over a to-do lists in a world where so many of us may look, pretend, or fancy that we are big, strong, and grown up but are still in so many ways little children.

I'm so thankful that I am the child of such a marvelous father: a father who by allowing me to care for a woman in an internet shop, showed me how intimately and tenderly he cares for me.