Have you experienced God giving you a new heart? If you have, did you request it?
My master’s project was supposed to be disparities in fetal infant mortality. Graduation was coming quickly and I still had no data collected because I had no willing participants to take my survey. My professor offered me an alternate project since she already had some of the data. However, it was a topic I loathed…women who have been incarcerated. I felt ZERO compassion or desire for this topic. I was not alone in this sentiment as I found plenty of company, even as a nurse, to judge and look at these women with disdain. My attitude could be summed up with: poor decisions usually yield poor outcomes, if you don’t want the latter, don’t do the former.
I agreed to the change in topic because I felt I had little choice if I wanted to graduate. So I began the arduous task of conducting the literature review which entailed reading dozens upon dozens (upon dozens) of journal articles. Many of the articles were qualitative, that is, they were interviews with women. What I didn’t expect was to sit at my desk with tears falling as I read gut-wrenching testimonies of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, struggles with addiction, children being used by abusive partners to control their behavior (even while incarcerated), homelessness, prostitution, low self-esteem, and every other intractable by-product of poverty. I didn’t ask for it but the Lord removed my heart of stone and filled me with compassion I didn’t believe possible. I have always worked with women and women’s health in some form or capacity. He gave me new eyes for this particular group of women. He softened my heart and gave me His eyes to see what He sees… broken women made in His image in need of a Savior….in essentials, no different than myself.
At the time this occurred I knew it was providential. I just didn’t know what I needed to do with my newfound heart. I have prayed on this for some time and do feel led to help build or create a ministry for women exiting incarceration and trying to reintegrate into the community. Not sure how…God never leads with full details and a year-long plan, written out for our reference. My experience has been….God provides just the very next step. We just have to choose every time whether or not to obey Him.
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