woman of valor

Standing in the doorway, watching her clean her own poop off the floor of the bathroom. Sheepish, delirious, scolded by the nurse, and barely able to stand. I help her up, and I tell her to wash her hands just as I flushed the toilet. She plunged her hands into the water coming out of the toilet to flush everything down, and I screamed “no! no! no! no!” and I showed her how to use the sink. 

Mumbling she looked at me, “Why would anybody poop in clean water?” She asks. 

I’d been called to the school to come take her to the hospital. I found her sitting in the dirt, one daughter in tears, her arms wrapped around her mom. Another daughter came running up to me and threw her arms around me and began to cry “I’m not fine, my mom’s sick! I’m not fine!” 

I wish I could say that I scooped her up and we headed straight to the hospital, but first I burst into tears. 

My strong friend; covered in dirt, mumbling nonsense, and stumbling to take a step. 

When we got to the hospital, the chaos ensued of trying to register a patient, getting her into a bed, the nurses beginning to panic after they checked her temperature, the doctors running in and bossing everybody around....They are all whispering “ebola, ebola, ebola.” 

I’ll cut a long night into a short story: the fever went down, she was diagnosed with a heavy infection in her blood (not ebola), she was put on medicine, and she started coming around after about 4 bags of IV fluid. 

The first thing she said when she sat up? 

“Auntie Mallory! How did you bring me here with such dirty feet!” 

That’s when my pleas turned to praise. 

I got her home that night, to many cheering and relieved children. 

Because if mom’s not there, nobody’s there. If mom’s not there, nobody eats. If mom’s not there, the baby cries. She works hard to provide what little they have physically. She works hard to teach what they can have spiritually: joy, peace, contentment. 

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come. verse 25

Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate. verse 31

woman of valor. 

I sat on the floor and looked at all the food surrounding me and slowly added it up in my head. 

One kilo of meat = 8,000

One kilo of rice = 3,000

Greens = 2,000

Matooke = 4,000

Soda = 3,000 

Total: 20,000 Ugandan Shillings ($8) 

The sinking realization that my friend has JOYFULLY spent exactly half of her weekly salary on one meal to have me as a guest in her house. 

No longer treated as a guest, we can collapse on the floor of her one roomed house and watch movies for hours. We can cook together whatever we can find. We can laugh and pray and sing and have sleepovers. I can help her clean. I can wash my own dishes. 

I listened yesterday as she broke down in tears over the women in her village. Three of her cousins have been widowed in the past year. I watched her passion grow as she talked about her desire to help them. She told me that a few weeks back, she found bedsheets for 800 Ugandan shillings (30 cents) each and she went without food for the day so that she could buy each of them bedsheets. 

I looked at the large pile of clothes on her floor that she was sewing and mending to send to them. “Clothes are not to make me beautiful. God makes me beautiful. Clothes are to keep me warm and keep me from nakedness. I don’t care what’s on my body, as long as I’m not naked.” More than half of the few outfits she has were piled up to be given away. 

You can see what little she has, and you can wonder how she has so much to give away. I can tell you that she works harder than most women I know and it’s not for herself, or her daughter, or to put food on her table...only Jesus. 

She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks. Verse 17

She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy. Verse 20. 

woman of valor.