Then Sings My Soul

Yesterday I saw a lady breastfeeding her three-year old while riding on the back of a scooter on a highway. I was so stressed that the three-year old was going to fall off that I became even sweatier than I already was which, really, is more impressive than it is anything else when you're trying to make sure your legs and shoulders are always covered in 35 degree heat. There's a reason why I'm not posting pictures of myself here; sweat patches are permanent, my facial expression is almost always confused, and I consistently shine like the top of the Chrysler building (Annie the Musical anyone?). 

Yesterday, I also spent some time in a slum where survivors of abuse and trafficking now run programmes for vulnerable children. That in itself would've been enough to become humbled and have hope in the spaces that I'm seeing and working in. 

I went to the Church service there in the afternoon. Most of it was in Khmer, so making faces at the little boy in front of me became my main occupation. It was hot, I don't know the language (yet, I'm staying optimistic that I possess great linguistic genius that I am yet to discover).

They started singing How Great Thou Art in Khmer. I started to sing too, except mostly just confidently made up sounds. Then I looked up at the woman in front of me. I realised that she was the first older woman I'd seen in Cambodia. I looked at her friends, they were around the same age. I thought back to my conversation with my housemate Lana the night before, when she'd mentioned the reason we didn't see old people around much. I realised that the women standing in front of me, hands raised in worship, beaming, were survivors of a horrific genocide. 

It's hard to know how to follow that sentence. I don't think I can articulate full well what that moment presented me with. It was an assurance, a brilliant and blessed assurance, that He is Great and good and everything powerful. That His character far outweighs circumstance. That he's so present in the places that ache. That he heals those very places, deeply and fully.

I have a feeling that the next six months are going to give me that revelation a thousand times over. How Great Thou Art, How Great Thou Art. 

Just before the slum, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.