Safe

“And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9 (ASV)

Past sixty, Mary was carried to church. Young men at Ikpe, an old slave-trading town two days up the Creek, were building a church with no one to teach them. She begged her Church to send two women. None came. “I must go,” she said. “I am in honour bound to go.” She lived in two rooms behind the church with a camp-bed. For the canoe journeys she took laudanum, the painkiller of the time, and lay wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the boat.

“I'm a wee, wee wifie, verra little buikit, but I grip on well, none the less,” she wrote. “I begin every day,” she said, “almost every journey in pain, and in such tiredness that I am sure I can't go on, and whenever I begin, the strength comes, and it increases.”

She still lost. At Ikpe twins were born. By now she believed it was better not to take twins from their mother, so the baby boy stayed with her, and Mary's daughter Jean slept beside them for ten weeks. One Sunday the mother hurt the baby and gave him poison. He recovered, and the parents took him home. Four days later Jean carried him back, dying. After nearly forty years, Mary could still lose. Beliefs change slowly.

She didn't pretend her faith was strong. “I am a poor exponent of faith,” she said. “I ought to have full faith in our Father that He will do everything, but I am ashamed of myself, for I want to 'see,' and that sends faith out of court. I never felt more in sympathy with that old afflicted father before in his prayer, 'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.' Every syllable suits me.” In 1913 she was given a royal honour and hid from the fuss, signing herself “the unworthy, unprofitable, but most willing, servant of the King of Kings.”

In 1914 war broke out in Europe, and she fell seriously ill. Her church boys carried her in her camp-bed and paddled her down the Creek. On 5 January 1915 she wrote to a mother whose sons had gone to war: “In God's governance not one precious thing can ever be lost.” A few days later the fever came back. Once she prayed in Efik, “O Abasi, sana mi yok”: “O God, release me.”

At half past three in the morning on 13 January 1915, at Use, Mary Slessor died, aged sixty-six. The girls she had raised were around her. When they understood, they cried out in grief and fear: “We shall be counted as slaves now that our mother is dead.” She had given them love, a home and a name, but she couldn't give them a safe place in a society where a child without a family had no protection. They knew it.

People came from the whole district to mourn Eka kpukpru owo, “Everybody's Mother.” She was buried on the hill above Duke Town, where she had first landed thirty-nine years before. At the graveside sat Mammy Fuller, the Jamaican nurse who had been her friend since her first months in Calabar. When women began to wail, the old woman stood up. “Do not cry, do not cry. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Ma was a great blessing.” As the coffin went down, she said one word: “Safe.”

Paul asked God to take away his weakness, and God said no: “My grace is sufficient for thee.” Mary was never made strong. She was given enough strength to begin, each morning. Her faith was often weak by her own account, her temper sharp, her views sometimes the views of her time. But no one who knew her doubted her love.

You don't have to feel strong to start. Start, and see whether the strength comes.

One thing to do this week: pick the thing you feel too tired or too weak to begin. Pray Paul's verse, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” and then just begin, for ten minutes. Notice what happens.