Fierce Beauty (18 page)

My mind extrapolated from these changes the image of a frightened child. The little girl I envisioned had her knees drawn up tightly, her face buried between them. With her slender arms wrapped around her legs, she squeezed with all her might. This cringing child was trying to fit into a smaller space than she physically occupied.

I realized that for most of her life, Misheal had hidden in plain sight. Yet on this day in our canoe, with every slow, courageous word she spoke, fear started to release its awful grip on the little girl it controlled. Like the pure white water lilies that our boat glided through, the beautiful grown
woman before me began to unclench, breathe deeply, and open, petal by flawless petal, into a precious, perfect bloom.

With her black ponytail brushing against the deeply tanned skin of her back, Misheal shared about her troubled and violent home life. Things in her outwardly perfect family became so tumultuous and threatening that—without warning—the house of cards came crashing down. I continued to listen in ever-deepening sorrow as she recounted how her life and mine were joined by the experience of having our families torn apart.

Finally her home life became so terrifying, so dangerous, that law enforcement officials intervened. At the age of fifteen, she was taken away from the only home she had ever known. In the blurring aftermath she was literally dropped into a new home, with new parents and new surroundings many miles away. My friend lost her beloved mother, her family, her home, her confidant, her friends, her school, her peer group, her neighborhood, and all that was familiar.

In a single day she lost
everything
.

It was upon this unfamiliar skeleton that she was expected to build a new life. This devastating event took place in the winter, in the middle of the school year. As if nothing had happened, the following Monday she was trundled off to a new high school. Completely alone and burdened with an armload of books, she walked down hallways she’d never seen before.

My friend conceded that going to a new school is hard for anyone. But since it was already halfway through the year, all the peer groups were already tightly knit and definitely not in need of a new, broken member. Misheal was alone.

Overwhelmed by a crippling combination of acute shyness and mind-numbing grief, Misheal didn’t have enough emotional strength even to try to build new friendships. Without question, this was the darkest season of her life. She was caving in, and no one seemed to notice or care.

In the canoe Misheal paused to look up into the elegant canopy of cypress limbs. Ten-foot Spanish moss streamers wafted in the lazy breeze
as if encouraging her to continue speaking. Misheal seemed to be looking for something, perhaps the right words, as she pondered their swaying invitation. Finally her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath and steeled herself to press through her pain.

Misheal recalled how, at that time in her life, she had been reduced by her anguish to little more than a hollow shell. Too weak to cry out for help, she simply cried. What was most deeply etched into her memory was that at the end of her first day in the new school, she realized no one had spoken to her. No one had even looked at her.

No one.

One day in the new school became two, then a week, then a month. Still, not one person engaged her in conversation or even looked her way. She was dying inside, and no one cared or even knew who she was.

Eventually, two months went by, and still not one person had spoken to her; not one person had even looked into her face—
not one
!

That’s when Misheal made her decision. It was time for her misery to end. She was sitting in the back row of her fourth-period math class when she came to this conclusion. She reasoned that no human being should suffer like this. In order to make the hurt in her heart stop, it made sense to her that this would only be possible … if she just made her
heart
stop.

At that grave moment she decided to go home and end her life.

Once Misheal crossed that bridge emotionally, it all seemed so logical. Her anguish would finally cease. She would be released from her pain. She found unexpected peace in this choice. She knew that among these merciless halls, she was nothing more than a dark-haired phantom. Although highly intelligent, she didn’t feel valuable enough to engage others in conversation. Though stunning in appearance, she didn’t feel appealing enough for others to even see. She would end her life and never be found in these forsaken corridors again.

No one will ever know that I died
, she thought,
because, truly, no one ever knew that I lived
.

With her decision in place, Misheal allowed her attention to wander to the intermittent showers outside her classroom window. She wondered
if the gray weather was mourning with her. Then the bell rang, ending the last math class she would ever know. She gathered her books and looked up at the classroom doorway as she walked beneath its tired frame. It felt strange to think she would never pass through this doorway again. Even more strange was that this revelation did not make her feel sad.

Misheal was joined in the hallway by a thousand other milling students seeking to steer through the same river of humanity. Carrying her books close to her chest, as she had for weeks, she drifted unseen through the churning mass.

Without warning, she was hit hard by a boy on the losing end of a shoving match. The force of the impact slammed her knees against the floor. Her armload of books splattered across the filthy tiles, hitting with such violence that they bounced into open, crumpled pages.

Careless feet marched over everything that only moments ago had been held safe in her arms. Tossed about beneath the dirty stampede were her composition books, pens, assignments, and notes. From her knees she watched in stunned silence as each item was stamped with the grimy, wet tread marks of the herd that trampled over them. She felt just like her broken, trodden things, cast beneath the uncaring feet of the world.

No one reached out to her. No one offered to help her up. No one seemed to care. Believing this was an accurate picture of her life, she shuffled through the stampede and, piece by piece, retrieved the soiled and tattered remnants of her things.

The incident and the callous response by her schoolmates confirmed to Misheal that she was making the right decision. Her prison of shyness was the only fragile wall that kept her tears from spilling over into this cold, indifferent corridor.

Trying to outrun her urge to cry, she gathered her belongings as quickly as she could and began walking. Glancing up, she noticed that a blond girl on the other side of the hallway was watching. Apparently she had seen the entire episode. Their eyes locked. Misheal was certain that at any minute the blond girl would burst out laughing or point and jeer.

Yet she did neither.

Instead, from the opposite side of the hallway, intense blue eyes held deep brown eyes. As Misheal walked, the gap between them closed.

Finally, just as the two girls passed, the blond girl did something unexpected.

She smiled.

Misheal followed the warmth of that smile as far as the rotation of her neck would bear. She couldn’t believe it. Was the blond girl
really
looking at her? What did she mean by that smile? Was it sincere? Was it born out of care—or pity? On the bus ride home, these questions plagued her crushed heart.

Finally the dilapidated school-bus doors opened, and the broken girl stepped out. As she walked the short distance to her new home, she reaffirmed her commitment to her earlier decision. This was the only way to make her pain cease. It was the only way she knew to find lasting peace.

Inside the house Misheal gathered the implements she would need to carry out her intentions. With everything in hand she went to the place she had chosen and prepared to proceed with her plan. Then she knelt on the floor.

Cradled in our canoe on the Okefenokee, my friend stopped her account.

I don’t think I realized until that moment that I had been holding my breath, as perhaps the angels that surrounded a hopeless young woman on that devastating day had done.

I watched in heavy silence as my dear friend laid her paddle across her thighs. We had left the protective overhang of the cypress trees and were now passing through a floating prairie. Within this rare place, suspended on the surface of the water, grew a lovely garden of grasses, sedge, and wildflowers. In sharp contrast to my friend’s terrible tale and as if to cheer her on, bright yellow flowers pressed around our boat as we passed through a narrow gap.

Misheal turned slightly. To me, her profile was a flawless masterpiece of courage and grace. Slowly, softly, she pressed through her self-imposed
silence and explained how she was poised to end her life. Locked momentarily in a position of self-destruction, images flashed before her tightly shut eyes. The one picture that was most relentless was the warm smile given by a complete stranger.

Held fast in the extreme awareness of the moment, Misheal’s whole body began to shake. Again the smile came back to her mind. At the speed of light, her thoughts streamed through an unexpected sequence: maybe it meant something, maybe it was real, maybe there was
one
person in the world who cared enough about her to offer a smile.
Maybe …

Her drawn body withdrew in a sobbing, nauseating gush of emotion. She collapsed on the floor and held herself as she cried. The solitary strand of hope that she clung to was the light within that single smile.

With her anguish released in a torrent, finally there were no more tears to accompany her sobs. All that was left were deep, empty convulsions. It was only when she was completely spent that she slowly summoned herself from the floor.

She had to know. If the smile was a hoax, she would follow through with her plans tomorrow. She would wait
one
more day.

The next afternoon at school, as the bell rang to herald the end of another math class, Misheal scooped up her books and again stepped into the crowded hallway. Fueled by heightened anticipation, she carried her books nearly under her chin. Scanning the multitude, she heard a child’s voice calling inside her chest, “Are you there? Are you really there? Is there one … who might care for me?”

None of the faces that moved past her looked familiar. Now, nearly on her tippytoes, she cried out with her eyes,
Where are you?

She continued to search the throng as she drew closer to her destination. Her throat tightened. Her one thread of hope was fading.

Misheal stopped momentarily in front of the doorway of her final class. She knew that if she stepped through, it was over. This was it. Her blood chilled as if it were turning to ice, crackling in from her extremities. She couldn’t move.

One last time she glanced down the hallway.

Suddenly, from around a corner in the corridor, the blond girl appeared. She was looking over heads too.

As if drawn by a magnetic pull, bright blue eyes found dark brown eyes. A second time the blond girl’s face brightened into a warm smile. Again their gazes held as the stranger walked closer, then past, then out of sight.

Once more the broken girl received a single breath of life in her gasping world.

One day became two. The blond girl kept smiling. Two days became a week. Weeks became a month. Two months went by.

As she told the story, the adult woman in the front of my canoe seemed to transform back into that expectant, hopeful young girl. Misheal said she knew that if she could just hold on until that space between fourth and fifth periods, she would be okay. One smile a day was enough encouragement for her to keep choosing to get out of bed. One smile a day was enough for her to keep fighting for her life.

This went on every day until the school year ended. Turning around to look at me, Misheal said, “One smile a day saved my life. One smile a day is what gave me the courage to hold on to hope just a little longer. until the day that I met the Author of hope, my Jesus.”

With that, Misheal smiled at me—a deep smile that I will never see the same way again.

“School came and went,” Misheal said. “The blond girl and I never even knew each other’s names. We never even met. She will never know how God used the simple gift she gave me. She will never know that she saved my life with nothing more than a smile.”

Nothing more than a smile
.

The power in this phrase has changed everything about what I yield to God. Misheal has been faithful about passing on the gift that was given to her. By sharing the story of her life, she has forever changed mine … and hopefully yours.

It’s true that God will use whatever we give.

It’s not up to us to understand how He will use our gifts. Our responsibility is solely to be faithful and obedient to His urging to give them. He is the King who turns a few barley loaves and two fish into a feast for thousands. Our gifts might seem incredibly small and insignificant. Yet when we step forward in faith and place them in the hands of our Lord,
everything
changes! He is the One who can transform our meager offerings into something amazing, something incredible, even something life changing.

From our perspective what we have might seem meaningless. Most have asked, “Who am I, and what do I really have to give?” Because of this mind-set, it’s easy to fall into the belief that we don’t have much to give so why give anything at all?

Friend, when we give God nothing, that’s
exactly
what we can expect to happen in our own hearts and the hearts of those He has called us to serve.

But when we give Him something—even a little thing—we open the door for our God to do incredible things. Our simple actions reveal that we’re taking steps of faith. Each step builds greater trust. And just like the little boy who ran through the crowd of five thousand, we prove by our actions that we believe our King can take our “sack lunch” and do something
amazing
.