katie rose writes

Twenty-fifteen began with a word pregnant with unmapped purpose. It exploded off the pages of the Word for me. It folded itself into the fringes of my poetry. It announced itself in people’s prayers over me. It came up again and again, sometimes so loudly that it blew me over and sometimes so softly that I had to whisper back, “Is that really You?” The word was BANNER.  The phrase it made itself known in first was “a banner over a battle not yet raging.”  The opening of 2015 came quietly, not with warfare or fanfare. It came easily, like how seasons change in Mississippi; not abruptly or slowly, but by shifts, contrasting from one day to another, or even one hour to another. There was no battle I could feel when these words were first spoken over me. I think the battle began today.  It was an easy move for me to make, to come here. To lay down life in the States and pick up a life I had so dearly welcomed and clung to for five years. Again, there was no w...

Here, I sit on a warm porch with a stilling breeze. I stare at the Himalayan foothills and hear birds and dogs and voices and infrastructure. I type these words because I need to, not because I want to. I don’t want to tell their stories; I want you to hear them as I heard them. *** We rode in the car, fighting dizziness and being tossed around like sacks in the back. We sat in the living room, my legs tucked up under me—indian style; that still way of sitting that we learned as children. Each time, I heard stories. Stories of persecution. Of families that say, “You are no longer my son. I will go to court and sign the papers, and it will be so.” Of families that tie their son onto a bed, beat him, and force him to eat food sacrificed to idols.  My brother’s uncle shared the gospel with him. He refused. “I’ve read your Bible, I like the gospel of John. But I do not believe Jesus is coming so soon, so I will enjoy my youth and in ten years, I will follow Him.” Wounded, his u...

Return . So much is packed into that word for me. I read through the book of Ruth the last couple of days before boarding a plane back to South Asia. And I saw that word over and over again. Right alongside the word “redemption.” Redemption always involves a return. A forsaking of something else and a return to what was always meant to be. Naomi and her family had gone out of Israel—where they were meant to be—and into a neighboring place, to escape a famine. After much pain and even more loss, she sets her heart to return, all based on a word she heard in the fields: “The L0rd has visited His people again.” The famine was over. She was to return.  And she, really, expected no redemption. Her words were metallic as they left her mouth—“The L0rd’s hand has been very bitter to me.” But the timing of the return changed everything: “it was the beginning of the barley harvest.” She may have thought it was good, a good chance for her accompanying daughter-in-law to find work to fee...