This is something that people don't tell you about missions very often, but you need to have tough skin. Tough skin and a really soft heart.

   One of my precious teenage girls came up to me after our youth activity. She wanted to talk about things that have been going on in her life.

She just started opening her heart. She talked to me about the hatred that she has held in her heart towards her mom since her mom abandoned her when she was just a baby. She told me that the Lord had been speaking to her about the need to forgive her mom. The Lord told her it is the only way that she can arrive at deeper level of freedom in her relationship with Him. She desires more and more of the Lord so she wants to forgive her mom, but she just can't. Last week her dad beat her again. She is still carrying the bruises on her backside. She wants to walk in healing and wholeness, but she doesn't know how to let go of all the anger that she feels inside. She poured out her heart, all the things that she had been holding inside. She was entrusting me with her deep hurts and shame. During the entire time that she talked, she didn't shed a single tear.

    She finished sharing everything that had been hidden within her heart and then she looks right at me and says, "I feel like you've changed in a some really terrible ways." Ha. Not what I was expecting to hear at the end of our heartfelt conversation.

   We talked some more about what the Lord is doing in her heart. We talked about her plans to go and visit her mom and offer forgiveness to her next month. I spoke some truth over her

heart. We talked until it was time for her to go home. When she left for the night I hugged her and told her again that I love her to which she responds. "Yeah, ok. Whatever." And then walks home.

    I know that she didn't mean any of the words that she said about me. She loves me and she knows that she is loved by me. She's just a kid who is hurting. Her life often feels out of control. She has a lot of anger building up inside of her and she needs a place to let it out. And I'm a safe place. She knows that my love for her isn't going to change no matter what she says or does.

   I'm learning to develop tough skin as I become a safe outlet for my kids' hurts and frustrations, but maintain a soft heart so that I can enter in to their pain with them and love them in the midst of it. I'd like to say that it's easy and I can always love them well. But that's just not true. Some days it's really difficult. Sometimes my emotions want to flair up when they lash out at me. Sometimes the need for affirmation rises up in my heart. But mostly I've found how to get what I need from Jesus. In that way, I am free to love them when they love me back and when they lash out because they need to know unconditional love.

    And just so that I know that she still loves me, my sweet friend snuck over to my house this morning and washed my bike for me before I woke up.