I dreaded going to meet her. Yet I knew that the Holy Spirit was prompting me to call on her. Her 7-year-old daughter had burst out in Sunday School class, “I hate Jesus!” This had upset her teacher who brought her to me. When I talked with the child, she told me that her mommy was very sick and might die. I knew that her mother had terminal cancer, and that the child came to Sunday school with her grandmother.
That day as I parked across the street from the address I had, I saw a tiny woman with a broom sweeping the walk to the side door. She wasn’t much bigger than a 10-year-old child. With fear and trembling, I got out of the car and made my way across the street.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Ann O’Dell from the Wesleyan Church. Your daughter is in our children’s Sunday School where I serve. I just wanted to come and get acquainted with you.” I really didn’t know what to expect, but she invited me to come into the house. We visited for several minutes. Before I left, I asked if I could visit again and she agreed.
I think it was on my second visit that as we sat at her kitchen table, I noticed her covering the side of her face with her hand. She must have made some comment about looking ugly. Indeed, she had no jawbone on that side and her face drooped because of that. I could relate to how she felt. All my life, I had been self-conscious of scars on my neck and especially my right arm which were badly burned when I was 10 months old. “I know how you feel, Janet,” I said. Then trying to put her at ease I showed her my scars and said, “I have always been self-conscious of my scars. See…I was badly burned when I was just a baby. Your face doesn’t bother me at all,” I assured her. It seemed like after that visit, we really connected.
Lesson learned: God can use even our scars to bring about good. Isn’t that what 2 Corinthians 1:3 and 4 is talking about? “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” The thing I loathed was the thing that drew Janet and me into a developing relationship, eventually opening the door for me to lead her to a personal relationship with Jesus.