parade of hearts

Tonight the Coffee Oasis (the launching pad for Hope in Christ Ministries) hosted an open mic night for people to showcase their abilities and inspirations. The majority of the performers came from a writers workshop that Erica Steele mothers each week. This is my second one. Both times I have left with the same conclusion: Erica is doing an incredible job. It is strange, even to write about it fills me with a emotion. You see, most of the girls that come are part of a large group of lesbians that have come to consider the coffee shop there safe haven. As Erica takes the girls through fun and artful activities she loves them and cries with them and laughs with them. When they get up to share she yells and cheers for them. Whenever they are doing well she prays without speaking for them and when they have had enough of their own lives she prays aloud with them. Once a week these girls are allowed to be girls. Every month these girls write with an eye towards sharing their work at the open mic. Between every title and sentence read I heard the same stories recounted in many different terms: "Why did I fall in love with a jerk", "happiness always leads to heartache", "the pain will never leave", "why did you treat me so bad?" "Why?" Then one of our own boys took the stage and responded with every lifting refrain of the hymn that releases itself in the beginning with, "o love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee...." I do not know if you understand the fullness of the hope that is in you, because even after the parade of hearts that I witnessed tonight I do not exalt as I should in the difference between life and death, light and dark, heaven and hell, the love of God and loneliness. Please pray for your own personal joy in receiving all that is in Christ and for spiritual breakthrough in the lives of these girls. Please pray to for Erica's encouragement.