Stepping stones

Last weekend, I was unexpectedly asked to address our church body and to speak of my experiences serving women in our county's drug court program.

Here's a piece of what I shared....

Without exception, the women I meet with are anxious, and they are fearful. Since childhood, they have been told that they are worthless, weak, unloveable and stupid.

They take these words in and they let them define who they are.

By the time these women reach adulthood, they have become consummate self abusers. They abuse themselves in their thoughts by repeating the messages they heard as children. They abuse themselves with their actions by living the kinds of lifestyles that they know are hurtful and death dealing.

Then they come into our program.

I see my role as two fold. I am both a deprogrammer and I am a stepping stone.

I help them sift through the lies that they've been taught about themselves.

I get to help each woman discover that they are not worthless, that they can learn, that they are loveable.

I get to lay down my life, my time, my love and be their stepping stone. I get to be their stepping stone to learning to love themselves. I get to be their stepping stone to acquiring their GED credential. I get to be their stepping stone to discovering a loving God.

There is no greater privilege.

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I stand by what I said too.

It is a privilege to kneel in service to another.

It is a privilege to offer one's self as a stepping stone to another person's healing.

Knowing this as I do, I cannot help but wonder why so few of us are willing to be stepping stones for others.

After all, isn't this precisely what Christ did for us?