Sometimes you don’t see it coming.  People impact you in ways you don’t expect.  Profound ways that make you stop and think and wonder, what just happened?

That happened to me yesterday.  And I didn’t anticipate it at all.

Thanks to my friend Tamera, I am part of a ministry called HOPE.  Helping Others Pursue Excellence.  We work with incarcerated women who are coming out of the prison system and are getting ready to head back into the real world.  A halfway house, I guess.

With each seven week session, there are 9-12 women who come to the HOPE class where we talk about faith, our relationships with God and pray with them and what they face in their future.  The first couple of weeks, they are, for the most part, cold and distant.  Rude even.  They don’t trust us.  They don’t think they need us.  We can barely get them to talk.  But they are a captive audience and we get a chance to talk about Jesus’ love for them for about and hour each time.

As the weeks progress, there is a slight shift each time.  They begin to let their hair down a bit.  They realize that we are there to love and not judge them.  They begin to open up just a little more each time they see us.  They begin to smile.

Yesterday was my day to do the talking.  I was asked to share my story, Fairy Tale.  It’s an allegory about the love of God and how He pursues each of us.  The main characters are a king (God), a prince (Jesus) and a girl (us).  The girl is rescued from certain destruction and death and is brought to the kingdom, where she forms deep relationships with the king and the prince and eventually becomes a princess.  Another version of a spiritual rags to riches story.

I thought it would be fun to highlight the princess aspect of the story with these women who are so cherished by their King.  So I brought princess crowns for each of them and placed the gifts that we brought them in princess bags.  We scattered the table that we sit around with pink candy kisses.

When they first came in, a crown was placed on each of their heads.  You should have seen their smiles.  Those little silver plastic bejeweled crowns brought out the little girl in each of them.  They gladly and proudly wore them.  Tamera and I each wore one as well.  And now it was story time…

As I read the story to them, I could feel their attention to its details.  Kleenex began coming out and eyes were being dabbed at.  They were getting it!  They were beginning to understand the depth of the love that God has for each of them.  These women hardened by hurt and circumstances were softening right before my eyes.  Cold hearts were melting in puddles of tears. But the tears were tears of joy and they were nothing short of beautiful.

I wrapped up the story, and Tamera and I again summed up the meaning of the story.  Tamera told of the free gift that God (the king) offered through His Son (the prince).  And as an emblem of that gift, we presented them with gifts – not because we had to or because they expected it, but because we loved and cared for them.

Their eyes grew wide with anticipation and they became like giddy little school girls, giggling and laughing.  Each watched in amazement as they took turns opening their gifts.  They oohed and aahed and gushed over each present and could not stop thanking us. It was overwhelming and humbling to see how such simple gifts could bring such joy and evoke such happiness.

What hit me so profoundly was that their emotion was so heartfelt and real.  There is no pretense with these women.  They have no intention of impressing us or doing what they think we want them to do.  They stopped trying to please others a long time ago.  So to see them soften was confirmation to my heart that God was at work in that room.  He was touching their souls and they were sensing it.  And I got to watch.  Beautiful.

We have two more weeks with this group of women and then we will begin with a new group.  I will probably never see these women again. But I hope that each girl remembers as they go back to difficult circumstances and life-altering choices that there is a King who loves her and has plans to make her a princess.  And maybe, just maybe, she’ll turn in plastic crown for one that will last forever…

Colossians 1:13 – For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves…

Luke 4:18 – The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed…