I spent three hours yesterday with my good friend Yut who disappeared from the slum several months ago but just started visiting again last week.

It was so great to see her and her little daughter Pahjai.  I first started to sit and talk with Yut while she was pregnant with Pahjai, saw her when she was first born and so precious, and now she’s walking and can say a few words already.  I’ve really missed them both.

I never heard the story of why she and her husband took off with their daughter, leaving their 6-year-old son with her elderly parents.  I asked the little boy, Keem, one day where his mom was.  He said very formally and somberly “she’s moved back upcountry.”  I could see the sadness and confusion on his face.

I thought it might have something to do with drugs, or debt, or crime of some sort.  Her husband deals drugs, drinks habitually, and has put the family deep into debt with his gambling addiction.  Yut frequently confided in me about the desperation she felt, what she longed to give her children but couldn’t, her deep questions about the evil people are capable of.  We talked about spiritual things, I told her I’d be praying.

Things went from bad to worse.  She, her husband and Pahjai left Bangkok in fear of her husband’s debtors who began to threaten violence.  After a month, though, they moved to the Bangkapi district, near our team’s office.  They told no one, though, including me, to keep their whereabouts a secret.  Yut started selling in a nearby market to earn a little bit of income (her husband refuses to look for a job), and now they’ve finally worked out a repayment arrangement with their debtors.

They’ll be moving back into Phothong at the beginning of February.  Yut said that once she found out how sad her son was that she had left, she couldn’t stand it, and knew she needed to move back.

But now she’s seriously considering leaving her husband.  It’s been 10 years, she said, that he’s been drinking and gambling them into so much debt.  She’s giving him another chance, he has said he wants to change, but even yesterday when I sat with her I watched him drink until his eyes turned red.

She’s also been given an offer to date and maybe marry a foreigner.  She has several friends upcountry who have married Westerners, and a few friends of one of these men are visiting soon and are interested in meeting her.   All she can see is how much better her friends’ husbands treat their wives and children, how much more responsible they are than her husband.  It’s easy for her to assume that all Westerners are that way.  “Some people want to marry a white man to get rich,” she said, “but for me it’s not that.  I just want someone who won’t destroy our family, who can provide a future for my children.”

It’s at these moments that I feel so inadequate, so lacking in wisdom, so unable to fix things.  I can understand the temptation, the frustration, the choice between staying in a destructive relationship that will likely never change, and getting out and pursuing this possibly better life.

I tell her I’ve seen God change families, I’ve seen him help people out of addictions, that I’ll be praying.  She nods, but it doesn’t seem to spark much hope.  I wish I had more I could say.  But there are no easy answers.  Thankfully, I don’t think that’s what she’s looking for from me anyway.  It can be my temptation to be my neighbors’ savior– to have the solution, some pearl of wisdom or inspirational words or strategy that will make things right.  But at times I’m grateful for my limitations.  If either I or my friends here thought I was the one who saved them, then I would be stealing God’s praise away from him.  I’m praying that God will use my presence, my prayers, but that ultimately he will act, that he will show himself strong and merciful, that Yut will see his hand of healing touching their family.