It was ladies night at the jail yesterday; the female population is low and I usually have four to six women that want to "come to church."
Last night the first woman arrived and we sat and chatted for a while when she began to pour out her past so freely. It's not unusual that women open up and share, but usually it's after I've built a rapport with them. This woman was in her forties and like so many there she was missing many teeth and her face betrayed her past of struggle. No one else arrived so I knew the Lord must have something special for this woman, when just then another woman entered. She was well over six feet tall, and had the most beautiful skin you've ever seen! It was a deep, dark ebony that immediately reminded me of Song of Songs 1:5 where the Shulammite bride declared, "I am black and beautiful."
Then a third woman arrived, she was in her early forties, very pretty but wore such sorrow in her face I immediately remembered her from the previous meeting. My heart went out to her in the previous meeting and I was so glad she came again because I prayed before I came that I could leave them with hope, a ray of gladness, and some degree of the joy of the Lord.
I have a number of topics I'm ready to discuss depending on what opens up. This was the night to simply read through a series of 12 scriptures that reveal how the Lord loves us and is ready to forgive us.
As we read a verse we then discussed how it struck us, and they were all very engaged and it was the kind of candid meeting I long to have where the sense of the Lord's presence fills the room.
Nearing the end of our time, the woman who came in last began sharing how her partner had been outside the jail earlier, yelling for her as he wept loudly. He is deep in addiction and has attached to her so strongly that he feels like life without her isn't worth living. This isn't a new story, many partners are so dependent on the person they love it becomes a suffocating obsession, and like this man, he would go to her workplace, home, and tonight, even the jail. I had to talk with her about this! So I asked if she could stay and talk, and she said yes she wanted to, so as the others left we had some privacy.
These are difficult situations because there is so much to cover in such a short time, what should take hours and hours of counseling is left for me to summarize in thirty minutes! And it may be the last time I ever see her. But the Holy Spirit was heavy on the room, the words flowed, her heart was open, and I left feeling I did all I could do, which of course, is never enough. But God....