a prayer for our girls

A few years ago I moved this woman named Nancy into my home. She had lost all three of her kids to C.P.S. due to her addiction to crack, and just bad living in general. I drove her to 90 meetings in 90 days. She got clean. She got saved. It was a miracle.

Last month she celebrated five years clean, sober, and loving Jesus.

I keep thinking about this story she told me once. She sat there smoking, talking quietly, lost in her memory.

She was strung out really bad, so bad she couldn't cope with anything, not even the sound of the refrigerator humming, so she locked herself in her bedroom for three days. Her daughter Destiny was about six at the time.

Destiny was so hungry, scared, lonely, and desperate that she lay on the floor outside the bedroom door, calling to her mother, who would not answer her. Finally Destiny put her hand under the door, her chubby little fingers sticking out on Nancy's side. Nancy could see them from where she lay on the bed.

"Please Mommy, just touch my fingers. So I can know you're okay."

"I couldn't even go to her, Jamie," Nancy said to me through eyes burning with pain. "I wanted to, but I couldn't."

Tomorrow I am taking 13 young girls up to Outpost at Calvin Crest. All of these girls come from homes similar to or worse than Destiny's. They are all hungry for a touch, some reassurance, a sign that there is a love that will reach a very deep and lonely place.

Please pray with me that they feel Jesus reaching for them, and that the grasp of His loving hand is what they cling to for all of their days.