SCRIPTURE: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who have been called according to God's purpose. Romans 8:28

So much non-verbal communication is conveyed by the way we use our hands.Hands are especially important in conveying a multitude of emotions. We welcome strangers by shaking hands, we convey love by holding hands, we all respond to a light touch on the shoulder which conveys that some-one cares.

I hated hands. My mother would hit me with them, whilst my father used rough, scratchy hands to touch parts of me that hurt dreadfully. Both of them had very strong, forceful hands. My hands, however were too small and too weak to push those hurtful and harmful hands away from me.

When I was about seven years old our whole family walked quite a long distance to a church service to see and hear about the needs of the poor in third world countries and the opportunities for spreading the 'Good News of Salvation' to all the world. That night was to change many years of my life. I don't remember one thing about the meeting apart from the special film they showed us to demonstrate the suffering and pain, and lack of Christians to staff a compound of very impoverished people suffering from leprosy.

Here in the leprosy hospital were men and ladies hobbling around, obviously in agony. It rather pleased me to see that here, in the Leprosy Mission, people were working as missionaries helping these sad people learn about Jesus. The BEST thing was....these lepers had NO HANDS! Almost all of them had just stumps, while others might have one or two fingers, but overall their hands were missing.

I knew immediately that this was something I could do...it would be safe to work with people who had no hands to hit me, or handle me roughly, or poke fingers into me which were so painful for me. I had never before seen footage of lepers and a new hope rose into my heart. It would be so lovely to live in a place where no-one had hands!

On the long walk home I told our family that I would dearly love to work with lepers. They looked so needy and so unloved and I felt I could make a difference. I did not of course mention my motivation for this......that they were people with no hands! Mother and Father seemed very, very pleased. They were even more happy about it than I was because they said that God had laid out the plan for my life. I had received 'A Call to be a Missionary'.I would save the souls of the lepers by bringing the gospel to them. They said this would be my life's calling....to be a missionary to the lepers.

It is virtually universally true that abused children hate hands. What appealed to me about being among lepers was to avoid hands. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the calling of God on my life to be a missionary. My parents jumped to a naive, impulsive conclusion which would make THEM feel good and look Godly amongst their friends. To have a child who wanted to be a missionary was quite a big deal!

Parents always want what they consider to be the best for their children. God, however, is not a parent who wants to look good! Yes, our creator does want the very best for us but not as a reflection of God's own creative power. Do not be concerned with what your earthly job looks like to your parents or anybody else. God will use you for the best no matter what official job you have. Eternal consequences are far more important to God than ANYTHING else. Our inward motivation to please God, and an open heart to learn and grow and change to become more and more like Jesus, is all our creator desires.

For many years I struggled because I felt a huge obligation to be a missionary to please my folks, and yet I no longer really believed that I had 'heard' this call from God.Looking back, if I had become a missionary just to please my parents, I would possibly never have faced WHY I hated hands, and avoided facing my abuse issues altogether. I would then have missed so much! I have seen the beauty of God's love through a few very special people who have never given up on me. While reliving some of my most horrific experiences of abuse, I have been at times hospitalized. During those stays I have had the privilege to know and love and share with some of the most courageous, brave people I ever imagined existed.

God is using my experiences of abuse, painful as they have been, to form a link to other abuse victims. I am committed to turning what man may have planned to hurt me, to result in bringing God the highest praise. I believe my writing now is part of that. It is bringing healing to me, and I hope also to other victims.You may be one of them.My calling is to be a form of missionary if you like, but not to people with no hands, but to people who HATE hands!!

PRAYER: Dear God, We pray for your love and comfort to surround all victims of childhood abuse today. Especially we pray for those children who are being so badly mistreated right now, and those adults who are most abandoned and too ill to live effectively. The potential you have planned for them may never be realized because of heartless humans. We know that your heart must be breaking with grief over this too, just like theirs and ours. Support them, and us today, we pray. Amen.

TODAY: Plan today to raise your own awareness of the problems of childhood abuse. A good book to get you started is 'A Boy called 'It', written by Dave Pelzer (Thorsons\Harper Collins Publishers, London).It actually is the first book in a series of four, so you can keep on going if you like!

Copyright 2002. Julie-Anne Wingate. All Rights Reserved.