“It won’t stay on my head,” I whisper to Ellen as I try surreptitiously to pull the headscarf back up higher, succeeding only in pushing hair into my face. How had the others all tied it? And how are they sitting so perfectly with their knees tucked under them? I squirm as softly as I can, shifting to a new position. My movement brings the attention of our B____ hostess who gestures at the tablecloth on the floor before us, filled to the edges with tea, naan bread, shredded carrots, pickled roots, Russian candy, wafer cookies, and liver. “She says ‘Eat,’” our friend translates. “I figured,” I smile back, mustering up the gratitude in my heart for getting to be here. I drink a big gulp of tea and hold a chunk of liver and naan in my hand for a while, as I had been coached, only shoving it in my mouth when I am prompted to eat again. It’s a pattern.
Sitting around the table on the plush mats with the flower designs are four women from a people group with an estimated 4,000 members worldwide. My mind still cannot fully comprehend what that low number means - for a language, a culture, the next generation. Their origin is shrouded in such mystery that they don’t even know for sure where their ancestors came from, but they seem mostly content living here on the edge of a former Soviet city at the foot of the mountains. Out the window we can see the shell of the home one of the women is building with her husband, and her two sons who come in and out of our room are all smiles. These five women are actually more than content, for they have found a hope that will outlast even the extinction of their people group.
Our friend opens the Scriptures to Mark 9 and begins to read at v.14, and the women lean in. The baby girl with the massive eyes starts to fuss a little and is passed around from one lap to the next, but she doesn’t deter their focus from the story they are hearing of Jesus healing a demon-possessed boy. They nod because they know. They have faced oppression of many kinds, legal, physical, communal, spiritual, and they too have found Jesus to be stronger and worth it all.
The liver in my hand is heavy and cold, and I work to tuck it under the rim of the teacup while I marvel at the faith of these beautiful people. As the discussion of the passage comes to end and we move toward prayer, our hostess points to Ellen and me to start. Following their example, I hold out my hands before me, palms up, while my mind races, “Do I have adequate words?” Thankfully Ellen goes first and in her prayer reminds me that this story we’re living in our vastly separate worlds is not the end. In fact, they will merge. One day I will hug these women again, and we will speak the same language, and they will no longer have dreams that frighten or neighbors who want to stop their building projects or children who cannot get medical treatment. Truly they are my sisters in Christ, the completion of all our stories.
The men join in for the final prayer of blessing, and I manage to escape having eaten only two bites of liver. I shrug up my headscarf again, searching my pockets for a bobby pin, as we are passed from hug to hug next to the car. One of them holds me close and speaks words I don’t understand. I respond with my own words, a blessing from the Old Testament, and somehow it feels like we may have just said the same thing. What a gift that our stories intertwined in this brief earthly moment.
