How God Works in the Midst of Darkness

IN EARLY APRIL 1994 , the sun beat down upon Rwanda while the deep brown eyes of an eight-yearold girl peeked out from dense bushes. Watching, waiting, heart pounding.

This was no game of hide-and-seek with her siblings. Instead Jeanne Celestine Lakin was trying to stay alive. Her parents, prominent and generous business owners, were suddenly homeless and in perilous danger. Steps away, their own neighbors were among the machete-yielding militia sanctioned by the government to exterminate Jeanne’s family and many other Tutsi people.

All at once, the Rwandan Genocide had begun, a massacre that would take nearly one million lives in one hundred days, for no other reason than their ethnicity. In the days that followed, Jeanne lost both of her parents and nearly all of her family to incomprehensible violence. She would be trafficked, abused, and eventually immigrate to the United

States at the age of fourteen, only to find herself with an abusive foster family. Such a horrific childhood would surely leave gaping wounds which would never heal, but that is not the story this hope-filled survivor tells.

With quiet strength, Jeanne shares how she saw God in the midst of genocide. More importantly, she tells of how He saw her. Each time she was in danger of being killed, she narrowly escaped after praying that God would blind the people trying to kill her. She was inexplicably set free again and again. “I started praying a simple prayer: ‘God, blind them. Blind these men and women with machetes. Blind these people, that they might not see me. I know they can see me, God. But You have a way of working miracles.’ I went back and counted how many times God revealed Himself to me in this way. It was over 200 times. God was working on my behalf. He was working in the midst of this darkness.”

The knowledge that God both saw and held her would be Jeanne’s constant companion in the years ahead, as much sorrow was still in her path. She would be kidnapped and sexually abused many times. She was nearly sold as a child bride. But in the midst of relentless tragedy, she still saw the hand of her God. “He has a way of working, even when we don't feel like it. He’s a God who sees. He sees details we might not see.” but opened the door for her to lead a full and joyfilled life. Twenty-nine years later, Jeanne is now a sought-after speaker, author, and orphan advocate in Houston, Texas. She and her husband Paul, together with their son, Samuel, are living a life that sparkles with redemption and the goodness of God. She speaks for all who hear her story when she says, “God takes these pieces that are just so broken, that we as humans cannot put together, and just creates beauty out of ashes. He puts these pieces into a beautiful mosaic that we get to admire.”

Six months after the genocide ended, long before her healing began, Jeanne remembers feeling devastated, gutted. “I was so lonely, so depressed, so sad because of all I had just witnessed. But I wanted to be able to forgive these people. I wanted to let go of what happened to me and be normal. But I couldn’t get myself to forgive what had happened.” Accepting her limits, she put the great burden of forgiveness in God’s hands. “I said to Him, ‘God, I need Your help. I need You. I cannot do this by myself. Give me the strength to do this.’”

In surrender, Jeanne found that God did indeed give her the capacity to forgive. “I felt so much peace in my heart. I felt like there was this possibility that opened for me, this potential I felt I could never reach. It’s all because of the love of God that we can fully experience joy.”

Though forgiveness began to provide the freedom Jeanne hoped for, she admits that it was a process where she constantly submitted her pain into the Lord’s hands. “Forgiveness is not a one-time act. Forgiveness is an ongoing act. So we forgive seventyseven times seven, and we have to continue to forgive and forgive. Many times we don't have what it takes to forgive. We ask God to give us the ability to be able to do this because it's not up to us.”

Jeanne admits this deliverance not only freed her from the weight of what she had endured,