Found in Translation (16 page)

“Aleesha said that?” I said, gasping.

“No, ma’am,” the man-boy said, apparently too modest to admit that those comparisons were original, “but we could see what we’d done. Passing by on the other side of the road and leaving you lying there was horrible, but we came by and beat you up even more.”

That was one smart kid all right.

The momentary quiet exploded into spontaneous applause—the kind that would have felt great after my “I’m staying” speech at orientation. Shy, young Neil had forced himself to speak, and he’d said eloquently what was in everyone’s heart that day.

One by one, others shared bits and pieces from Aleesha’s impromptu sermon. Her powerfully inspired sermon had me in tears. I started to appreciate the diversity of our group and to imagine how each of our individual gifts might prove useful.

Whoops. My turn.
“I can’t thank you enough for your support.”

I felt a blush bathing my face at the clichéd way I started. Before it could turn into a flood, I struggled to find something more precise—more meaningful—to say. I wanted to speak fluently, but my nerves took control of my tongue, and I stumbled through my speech the best I could.

“The—the truth is I … the truth is I don’t know how to express my grati—to express my appreciation any better than that. I’m embarrassed to admit how disillusioned I—I felt during orientation, and it didn’t get any better at breakfast yesterday or right after my accident. But you’ve given me a much-needed lesson in forgiveness, too. I hope we can work together as a … as a team now. I’ll do my best to help any way I can—even with—with my broken arm.”

“Amen!” Aleesha said.

From somewhere—perhaps an angel started it—“When God’s People Come Together” filled the mess tent with ever-increasing volume as one person after another joined in singing. Enough kids knew the parts to give the sound an unbelievable a cappella richness. Singing in an angel choir couldn’t have been a more glorious experience.

After a number of repetitions, someone changed songs. The new selection couldn’t have been a more perfect follow-up.

Hands reached out to hands, and nobody wanted to quit singing. Aleesha’s voice—rich, clear, and beautiful—rose above the rest.

The villagers held hands with us, too, even though they didn’t understand what we were talking about or why and what we were singing. But the Spirit had obviously moved them. Whatever they witnessed that morning was good.

Just as suddenly and unexpectedly as the singing began, we reached a stopping point. I didn’t realize until several minutes later that I was still holding hands with the person on my left. The one on my right was gently touching my shoulder.

Part of me was dying to say, “I’ve got to ask one last question.” Not wanting to break the mood, however, I remained silent. I couldn’t be the one to poke a hole in this reverent balloon of fellowship.

“Kim, you look like you want to say something,” Geoff said more loudly than he needed to. Although I might feel guilty about it later, I resented his doing that.

I shook my head. I frowned. I glared. But he was unstoppable. He couldn’t have shattered the worshipful atmosphere more completely if he’d meant to.

“This feeling of love and unity is overwhelming,” I began. I could barely speak for sobbing. As tears of joy kept running down my face, I forgot about my anger at Geoff. I’d never experienced God’s presence in such a real way before.

I still didn’t want to talk, but I had to. “Maybe Geoff did us a favor by bringing us back down to earth. We can’t build houses in the valley if we stay on the mountaintop all day.”

I saw smiles and nods of agreement. “But I do have one more question, and it’s bugging the daylights out of me. You all looked like you were scared to death of Aleesha when you spoke to me earlier. Yet you’ve insisted she didn’t threaten you—”

“Oh, we didn’t exactly say that, Kim,” Geoff said.

“She threatened to preach the sermon all over again if we didn’t show we’d learned our lesson the first time around,” the blond explained. “She told us she’d keep repreaching it until it took, and she’d make it longer every time.”

“But it took the first time, didn’t it?” Aleesha said, grinning.

Throughout the rest of that day and well into the evening, I heard bits and snatches of team members humming, whistling, and singing “When God’s People Come Together” and “Wherever There Is Need” while going about their construction chores.

Tears filled my eyes every time I heard it.

I
was on my way to worksite #2 with some requested bottles of lukewarm water—I was at full capacity with three under my good arm and one in my hand—when one of the girls stopped to talk to me.

“Hi, Kim. How’s the arm? You don’t know me, but I’m Judith and I’m so sorry about how I’ve acted the past few days.”

She was right. Not only did I not know her, I couldn’t remember her from the endless procession of make-righters who had greeted me before breakfast.

“Don’t worry about it, Judith. All is forgiven.” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the motion the pope makes when blessing people. I tried to sound convincing, but that was especially tough when I didn’t know what I was forgiving her for. What specifically, that is.

Maybe I should have asked, but dredging up details about something I thought was completely behind me didn’t seem right.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” I said with what I meant as a mischievous grin, never suspecting that anyone could be sensitive enough to take an obvious, smart-aleck joke like mine as a serious reprimand.

I didn’t notice my blunder until I saw her face turning beet red. She barely managed to squeak out, “Oh, I won’t,” and then her tears started flowing.

Had I just shot Bambi’s mother? Or maybe Bambi. I felt awful. Maybe worse than Judith, if that was possible.

Some people sob. Others weep. And some …

A product slogan says, “When it rains, it pours.” Well, Judith’s tears were in danger of putting even the highest sections of Santa María—they didn’t appear to be more than a foot higher than the lower sections—under salt water. She just kept on raining and pouring, pouring and raining.

I felt horrible about my insensitivity and wondered whether offering to amputate my tongue might make things right again. No, she might take that literally, too, and I wasn’t ready to sacrifice the most important organ in my body.
She’ll get over it,
I told myself.
She’s too sensitive. It’s her fault for over-apologizing.

But no matter how I tried rationalizing my thoughtlessness, I couldn’t escape the fact I’d hurt the poor girl’s feelings and needed to make things right.

I wanted to form a time-out sign, but I didn’t have enough hands and arms to do it. I probably wouldn’t have done it right, anyhow. I’ve never been fond of sports.

“Joke, Judith,” I said. “Horrible, tasteless joke. I can be so thoughtless. Can you ever forgive me?” As far as I was concerned, I was prone on the dry, hot ground kissing her dirty, stinky shoes. I couldn’t get more humble than that.

Although the tears stopped and a slight smile came to her lips, her blush didn’t fade. I’d never seen one last so long. The longer her face stayed red, the worse I felt. I’ve seen permanent markers come clean faster. Had tears affected her makeup in some weird way that altered her skin color?

“Oh, Kim, how wonderfully Christian you are to forgive me so easily that you can joke about it.” Her sincerity was as scary as her awkward-sounding sentence.

How could I free myself from this girl’s naive adulation? I didn’t want to be overtly offensive, and I didn’t want to make her cry anymore. I just wanted to climb off the pedestal before I fell off.

It was taller and scarier than any ladder I’d ever attempted climbing.

I decided to try something extreme. I looked around to make sure nobody would overhear me. I purposely let a mild vulgarism escape. Surely hearing me talk that way would deflate her opinion like dropping a basketball on the point of a nail.

“Kim? You have problems with your language, too? You are so human.”

Her over-the-top sincerity made me want to say a much worse word, but I couldn’t. Maybe this habit-changing thing was working better than I’d realized.

Lord, what …? Huh? Okay, thanks.

“Judith, you give me too much credit. I’m not mostly saint and slightly human. I’m all human and a weak one most of the time at that. If I were as wonderful as you think, I wouldn’t have acted the way I did at orientation, and I would have forgiven everybody on the team without waiting for apologies. Jesus did that when His enemies weren’t sorry for their actions. Don’t expect me to do that. I can’t keep from being hurt and angry when people wrong me.

“Speaking of ‘hurt and angry,’ Bamb—uh, Judith—I need to beg your forgiveness now. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you so thoughtlessly.”

She might have been sipping drops of water from the crevices of a wet sponge with a straw the way she appeared to take in the nuances of everything I said. When I finished, she threw her arms around me.

“I don’t care what you say, Kim. I still think you’re the finest Christian here.”

I turned red then.
Lord, please don’t let anyone else be under the delusion Judith is under.

Judith was just one of dozens of team members who, freed now from Aleesha’s threat of sermon reruns, stopped to say hi whenever they saw me. Some of them hugged me, and a few apologized again, but most of them said how great it was that we could put our mutual sins behind us.

And nobody else—
thank You, Lord—tried
putting me on a pedestal.

We worked hard that morning, but we spent much of the time building good relationships.

I kept my permanent marker with me at all times. Everybody wanted to sign my cast, and nobody else in Santa María had a marker for that shade of purple.

Thank goodness for my thoughtful emergency room nurse, who’d even given me a spare. She must have had a teenage daughter.

Geoff stopped to hug me, but his embrace wasn’t the gentle, innocent, sideways kind Christian males are known for using on their Christian sisters. He clasped both arms around me as if trying to keep me from escaping and squeezed tight, holding his hands flat against my back for a moment.

I was afraid he was going to kiss me. I honestly believe I would have bit him as hard as I could if he had. I had nothing against kissing boys, but …

He seemed to enjoy taking advantage of my temporary incapacitation. Although his overly friendly embrace had made my skin crawl, I was too busy with construction activities to dwell on it once I wiggled out of his grasp and giggled as if that’s what he’d expected me to do.

I spent most of the morning dividing a barrel of nails into eighteen equal portions—Rob finally came along and told me I didn’t actually have to count them. Then I started carting bottled water and small supplies as needed. If I couldn’t lug more than five pounds of anything one-armed (three pounds if the load was breakable), at least I was doing something useful.

The other team members agreed.

“Good show, Kim. You’re right on time.”

“How’d you know we needed that right now?”

“I’m glad we have somebody like you we can count on.”

“I can’t believe how efficient and responsible you are.”

I jotted that last comment down word for word and asked Martha—the girl who’d said it—to sign it.

“Martha, I want to show this to Mom and Dad. They’ve never said such a thing about me. Not once in their lives. They probably won’t believe it.”

“Here’s my phone number, too,” she said with a smile. “If they question you, have them call me.”

I wouldn’t get a reputation for dependability by accident. I’d have to work hard to earn it. But this was a start.

“As far as the east is from the west …”

That’s how different today felt from the preceding couple of days. I felt good about being in Santa María. Great, in fact. I hoped the villagers could see the improvement in my attitude—and in everyone else’s.

Yet I seemed to wrestle with God every time I prayed, and I prayed a lot while carrying out duties that required no thinking. I humbled myself at the beginning of my prayers only to start complaining about the things God wouldn’t let me do.