All Things New

The name Maria traced back to ancient Egyptian time means beloved, and I don't think anyone I know with this name is more beloved to God than the one I met when I first arrived in Belize.  I was with a team of people who had gotten the honor to be invited to Maria's house, and it was a life-changing impact on me.

I was not fully prepared for what my eyes beheld around me in the jungle of Belize that day.  Now I have seen poverty, and even experienced it on a smaller level, but what I saw was extreme third world poverty. Maria has absolutely no running water, nor electricity of any kind. Her house structure was patched together with all kinds of materials to protect from the weather. The restroom was a makeshift outhouse.  Bathing was done by sponge bath. Laundry done by hand in the nearby river.

Since there is no running water in this area, Maria has to dig her own well. This well must go down at least 20 feet into the ground.  And since there is no electricity, she must chisel through the rock, granite and other hard materials with hand tools. She fills up 5 gallon buckets with the rock, sand, and dirt, which are then hauled to the surface with a rope.

Maria is in her 70’s, and has a strong, spunky personality that doesn’t like to be told no. She does not speak English, but loves to talk when you get time with her. She is lively and wants what is best for her daughter, Ester and son-in-law, Patricio.  And she simply adores all her grandchildren.  But Maria has also gone through some extremely tough life experiences, one of which was the murder of one of her daughters. To cope with the extreme emotions that accompany such tragedy, she turned to alcohol. She drank to mask the pain of her loss, but could not find permanent relief from her deep seated pain, which spiraled her into depression.

I was privileged to hear Maria's story one day last summer. The circumstances seemed strange at the time, but things are all clear on how they lined up now.  I received a phone call saying that Maria was in extreme pain and nobody around where she lived would take her to the hospital. So another member of the team I was with and I jumped into our green van, and went to pick Maria up from her house. Maria said she could ride the bus from my house, if I would only take her that far.  We returned to my house and waited for the bus.  But when the bus driver saw what kind of condition she was in, walking slowly in extreme pain with a walker, the bus passed her right by. 

It was then that we asked Maria if we could anoint her with oil and pray over her. So right there, at the bus stop in front of my house, my friends and I prayed.  We asked Ester to translate, and we asked God to touch His beloved Maria, not knowing she needed healing for her emotional pain, as well as her physical pain.  We just asked God to touch her.  When we were finished, another bus came, waited for Maria to board, and away they went, to see the doctor.

Late that night Maria came back to my house after seeing the doctor, and she was walking with no pain, no walker, no crutches! She had been healed by God. While I was in our prayer room, Maria walked in, dropped to her knees and began crying out to God to rededicated her life to the Lord! It was then that she told me all the things she has been battling with over the loss of her daughter; the depression and the trying to wash it away with alcohol. I used a translator to communicate with her, and let her know she is in the right place now and that we cared deeply for her. I could see years of pain and grief and torment being washed out of her with the tears streaming down her weathered cheeks. There is redemption when you take the time to invest into lives and peel back the layers until you get to a heart that was deeply hurt and wounded. 

When I asked Maria if she could move into the village so that she could be closer to a doctor if needed or her family, her spirited personality came alive, and she firmly told me no. She loves living how she lives and where she lives. It is what she knows and is very content in her life. This impacted me deeply, because I then began to see the beauty in the poverty that my physical eyes were seeing. 

It wasn’t poverty at all.  It is instead, a place that her children and grandchildren love and always want to go visit. Her house is a place of family and love. It is a place where the kids go play in the pond water before it evaporates in the dry season, and play in the jungle with anything they can find. This even took me back to my own grandparents’ house in the country, where as a young boy I would spend hours exploring and playing with anything we could find. 

Every time I see her, Maria gives me a huge hug and thanks me for that day of stopping to impact her life. But I think it is the other way around for me; I owe Maria a debt of gratitude. It was my honor to watch a person who was seasoned through extremely tough life experiences respond to the healing touch of God. The impact on my heart that extreme gentleness and comfort for stopping for the one has will never leave me. 

I am honored to have been introduced to Maria, the beloved one. Investing into one person with your time, talents, and gifts truly can have a lasting and meaningful impact. It can make all things new.

Guest Blog Writer: Travis Arment