She

She is 10. I am 20.

She has parents who are deaf and unable to afford her. I have parents to listen to me and shower me with gifts.

She and I have identical birthmarks on our left hand.

She and I like to clap together-- but mostly because we bonded over the hand thing.

She is timid and shy. I get where she's coming from.

She and I were friends.

She is in her country, and I am in mine.

She is loved. As am I.

She is Heidi and I am Sadie.

We sat there clapping along to J.C.'s beautiful rendition of "Hosanna" and I cried. I pressed my nose to her hair and took a breath. We were making a joyful noise for the Lord, the two of us. From very different worlds, we praised.

I'll never know what it's like to be on her end. Or she, mine.

She didn't smell of Dove body wash like me. She smelled a lot like the bathrooms we kept making fun of all week.

She is a sweet aroma to Christ.

She may struggle with a lot in life, but I'll struggle all my life to match the richness of her humble, serving spirit. She has grown up with a forced detachment from things I've spent a lifetime attaching myself to.

She and I may never know why the gap between our lots exists. But we both have this:

¹⁵For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, ¹⁶I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.¹⁷I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. ¹⁸I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:15-19)

And it's what we both have, she and I, that I'm interested in.

What we share? Well, it's all we need.

Him. He.

I prayed the words into her ear as a whisper while J.C.'s voice filled the room boldly.

Heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Show me how to love like you have loved me

Break my heart for what breaks yours

Everything I am for your kingdoms cause

And I sang them again the night we said goodbye. Just she and I, in a corner, amidst chaos she knows well by now.

Praising He who is able.