Mobile

Mrs Oomen has made a decision to live with a man. Its not surprising - the lot of young widows is not high in our society. The amount that she was earning was clearly not enough to support her and her two children. Mrs Oomen had a mobile phone. She talked on it a lot. It was clearly given to her by someone. She is now living with someone else.

We have been talking to Mrs. Oomen. For a number of years now.

She recently brought up the issue of marriage. Till now she had been denying any relationships. Tightly. The matter of her mobile was something that we could not get around with her.

Truth telling has always been an issue with Mrs. Oomen. It also makes it hard to trust and work with her. The losers are her two lovely children - and herself of course. Lies are corrosive.

Being HIV positive she said that the 'boy' had been told that she had a 'big disease'. She claimed that he was fine with that and that he had told her that 'he loved her and not her body.'

Being a parent of 2 kids - she said that her man will look after them well.

When the young man was asked to come for counselling - she said he would definitely come. He didn't. Said he couldn't be bothered.

End of story for now? We want to reach out to our friends with HIV. But many times the virus is not the only thing - or even close to the most important thing - that is holding them back.

Many, many unhelpful and harming decisions are made. Every day. The mobile in the hand of Mrs. Oomen was always a sign of what has happened. Men don't give phones just to chat. They want more. They want bodies. Women do not just say sweet things on the phone. They want stability. And security. And both men and women want mixtures of the two.

As we strive to help our Positive Friends make a new life - with choices that are based not on the conventional wisdom - but on a radical change of heart and mind - we still find so many falling back on the old. Our Lord went out of his way to meet a woman at a well. A Samaritan woman - an outcaste and infidel for the religious Jews of the day - and a woman who had had 5 husbands in a row and was living-in with another man.

There is hope for Mrs. Oomen. There is hope for each one of us in the various broken situations we find ourselves in. But hope delivered needs lives that make decisions to change - and ones that open themselves up for God to do just that which they cannot do on their own.