the psalm my people sent me away with

by Sara

We keep hearing the stories of how immigration realities we confront with our friends in the Skagit Valley are tearing families apart. But today I realized that until you have a personal example, until it somehow affects you, it doesn’t quite hit home.

Today someone from our very faith community came to us after a phone call that he said “destroyed him.” After several days of working in the fields and feeling a sense of restlessness and deep concern, he phoned his wife in Central America begging to know if anything wasn’t right at home. She leveled with him, saying she’s just decided to leave him for someone else. “It has been too difficult,” she said, the same woman who two years ago prayed and agonized with him about the decision to risk his life by crossing the border to come make money for his family and village. In the end, they decided together that he should go.

As we listened to him, to his grief, he wanted us to understand that he doesn’t question God’s goodness in this. He is aware of the struggle against an enemy that is out to rob, kill and destroy any piece of that goodness he can get his hands on. But that doesn’t change the deep sadness he feels—we all feel—at this news, at what it’s like for him to call each of his children far away and explain the situation. It doesn’t change the fact that as we stood in the kitchen and talked tonight, he held my biggest kitchen knife to his heart and said, “I wish I could just cut it out so I wouldn’t have to feel this, but I know I cannot.”

This morning as we surrounded him to pray for the Comforter to come near, one of the women in our circle said she had a psalm to read. As the words of Psalm 91 were read in Spanish, rich promises of God’s covering and protective care spilled from the text. Slowly, our friend reached for his wallet, opened it, and took out a worn but neatly folded paper. Interrupting, he said: “Look. This is the same psalm my people sent me away with, to remember God’s care for me as I crossed the desert and the border and came here.” And there it was, each verse of Psalm 91 written down the page.

What a way for God to remind him that it is still true, even now, even when the worst he could have imagined has happened. What a God, who enters into the darkness with us and holds us—holds our friend—there.