Black Crayons

I held back tears as woman after woman asked me for a black crayon. Others patiently waited for black crayons to become available after I ran out. They would occasionally take a brown one or even some times red. What were they doing with these crayons?

They were expressing how they felt about their abuse.

As I stood in that simple church in Goma, a city just miles from the active war front devastating the Democratic Republic of Congo, I felt wholly inadequate. Who was I to think I had anything to offer these women? These are women who have grown up in the middle of a horrific war in which the rebels routinely use sexual violence to achieve their ends. Every single woman has some experience of sexual brokenness in this culture so touched by human depravity.

I was in the DRC, as well as neighboring Rwanda, as part of a team dedicated to training pastors and church leaders about sexual abuse and trauma so that they might care for the people the Lord had entrusted to them. But it grieves me to say that many of these women and a large number of these men as well had to work through their own trauma surrounding genocide and sexual violence before they could ever hope to walk their churches through the process.

But who was I to stand there? Had my life been perfect? Obviously not, but I had never experienced anything close to what these beautiful and godly people had suffered. My privilege hung rank around me and weighed on my heart. Who was I to think that I could do anything in the face of an abuse so profound that the only thing that could begin to capture it was a black crayon?

It was a moment that would stand out from the others in the weeks after my return. The faces looking up at me and asking for just one more black crayon. It literally shreds my heart to recall it now. As I cried out to the Lord and interceded for these precious souls, He laid a profound realization on my heart.

He said “Jessica, never for a minute think you can’t love someone just because you haven’t experienced exactly what they have experienced. That’s actually what makes your love so profound. You stood there and willingly entered into a painful place that you didn’t have to because I asked you to do it. You stood there and said ‘I care’ and ‘You’re important’ even though you could never really understand. You let their lives break your heart and you will never be the same. In that moment, you offered them love and a glimpse into the reality that people around the world care about them and care about their experience.”

The reason that abuse is so profound is that it seeks to destroy the very image of God that is part of our DNA. The fact that we bear the image of our Creator gives us intrinsic value, worth, and dignity and abuse does its very best in all its forms to strip us of that truth. It fails to recognize what is important to the Creator in its insidious need to control, debase, and destroy.

In that way, abuse affects us all. Any attempt to destroy what the Creator has called beautiful and precious in His sight should bring within our souls a deep sense of injustice. What God has called His, abuse seeks to say is worthless.

And that is why the issue of abuse is so important for the Church to talk about openly and honestly. Because abuse affects me even if I have never experienced it personally because it affects those I call brother and sister. It is important to me because it seeks to destroy what my Creator has knit together. I know that it can be uncomfortable to step into that pain with those who have experienced abuse when you yourself haven’t but it is something we must be willing to do! Because we need to enter into the pain of those who have been told that they are worthless. We need to be the light and the truth for those who struggle to see it years after the abusive act took place. We need to stand there in that truth and say “I see you, the Church sees you, and God sees you. You’re precious, you’re beautiful, you’re worthy.”

I pray that you will stand with me in that place and love those who have been abused, even when it is hard and even when it is heartbreaking. One day there won’t be a need for black crayons anymore, but until Jesus returns let us pull together as the body of Christ and care for those that He has placed in our path.