This is Part 2 of Taru’s story. If you missed it, read Part 1: The Girl No One Wanted. This story comes from our partners in India, David and Taru Kumar.

“When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” — Psalm 27:10

Part 2: Last month, I left you with the painful story of little Naziya. For months, Taru Raj Kumar and the ladies at Deepam School had watched this medically fragile little girl begin to blossom. With good food, vitamins, medical attention and patient love, Naziya began speaking a few words. She even danced at a celebration while her delighted grandmother asked Taru to make a video for the parents in Mumbai who had left her behind.

Then Naziya disappeared. Weeks later, Taru learned that she had died.

The questions surrounding Naziya’s final days have never been satisfactorily answered. Taru and the other Deepam ladies still grieve that one small, vulnerable child somehow slipped beyond their reach. What hurts Taru most is knowing that if someone had simply called, she would have come. She might not have been able to solve every problem, but she would have tried.

Yet grief has not caused Taru to withdraw. In some ways, it has helped her see more clearly what God has been doing in her life for decades.

God has taken the pain of a girl who once felt unwanted and turned it into compassion for people who are hurting.

“This Is a Safe Place. Freely We Can Talk.”

This last month, Taru was traveling again with David Raj Kumar and their ministry partner, Rev. Abhiram Singh, taking SALT—Seven Areas of Life Training—to pastors, wives and believers in northern India.

These were not easy ministry days. There were long train rides and overnight travel with little sleep, stomach problems and unfamiliar food. David reported one journey that began at 2:00 in the morning and did not end at their hotel until 11:00 that night. On the way to join them, Abhiram’s flight was struck by lightning. David reported that the aircraft was damaged and experienced a frightening loss of altitude before landing safely.

David’s immediate response to those of us praying for them was telling: “Can you see how helpful and necessary your prayers are for us?”

There were other concerns as well. In some areas, the team was advised not to move around publicly as one visible group. They traveled quietly, often two by two, careful not to attract unnecessary attention that might create trouble not only for them but for the pastors and churches who would remain after they left.

Then Taru sent me a short late night text message: “This is a safe place, freely we can talk.”

Those few words carried more meaning than they might first appear to.

They had finally reached a place where around thirty pastors and believers could gather for SALT training without the same concern over who might be watching or listening. Elsewhere, David told us that Christians were worshiping behind closed doors and asked us specifically to pray for the pastors and churches living with fear.

Yet woven through the hardship were beautiful little expressions of Christian fellowship. Local believers opened their hearts and fed them generously. The food could be another challenge—especially the heavily spiced biryani! David simply cannot handle that much red chili, so one thoughtful pastor began preparing food without chilies and spices for his guests.

I love that picture of the Body of Christ: one person teaching, another learning, another praying, and someone else simply making sure his brother has something he can eat.

Tears Over Forgiveness

Then came a moment that, to me, captures why Taru was there.

After a SALT lesson on forgiveness, a woman approached Taru with tears running down her cheeks.

For years she had carried bitterness, hatred and deep resentment toward her husband and his family because of the painful treatment she had experienced as a woman and a wife. She told Taru she had never heard forgiveness explained this way before.

Through God’s Word, she began to understand that forgiveness did not mean pretending the hurt was acceptable or denying what had happened. It meant releasing the bitterness into God’s hands, trusting that He remained in control, and allowing Him rather than her wounds to determine how she would live.

She told Taru that she had experienced freedom.

I wish I could have been standing nearby when that conversation happened, because look at the woman God had placed in front of her. Taru knows something about bitterness.

She knows rejection.

She knows what it feels like to wonder why the people who should have loved you did not.

As a little girl, Taru was left at Mukti Mission because her family did not want her. She became angry, rebellious and difficult. Then God placed Margaret Williams in her life—a gracious Australian missionary who loved Taru even when Taru herself admits she was “naughty” and hard to love. Margaret became the mother figure Taru desperately needed.

Even more importantly, Jesus met Taru in her woundedness. He did not change her past. He redeemed it.

“The girl who needed Margaret to stay became the woman who stays.”

Taru can look backward now without allowing yesterday to own today. She speaks of God giving her another family, and that family includes David and their sons, but also Steve and the larger ITMI family God has gathered around them.

Her past was painful. Her present has purpose. And her future belongs to Christ.

The Same Taru, Wherever God Sends Her

That is the woman who sits in Deepam with Muslim and Hindu mothers and listens to their family struggles. She is the woman who takes a frightened preschooler into her lap until the crying stops. She is the woman former Deepam children return to when they need tutoring because their parents work impossibly long hours, cannot help with schoolwork, or home simply is not a safe place to study.

And she is the same woman who boards another train with David and Abhiram and travels into difficult parts of India to sit with pastors’ wives and women carrying wounds of their own.

The location changes. The calling really does not.

Taru keeps moving toward hurting people with the love and truth of Jesus.

Paul describes God as: “The Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble…”—2 Corinthians 1:3–4

I can hardly think of a more fitting description of what God has done in Taru Raj Kumar’s life.

The little girl who desperately needed someone to love her became the woman who loves the child others overlook.

The girl who needed Margaret to stay became the woman who stays.

And the woman who learned that her painful past did not have to control her future now sits across from another hurting woman and helps her discover the same freedom in Christ.

God does not waste a surrendered wound.

Please pray for Taru, David and Abhiram as they continue going where God opens doors. Pray for health, protection, wisdom and stamina, and pray for the pastors and families they are strengthening—some serving Christ in very difficult places.

Faithful obedience will not always take us somewhere comfortable. Sometimes it will ask much more of us than we expected.

But David and Taru’s lives continue to remind me of something worth remembering:

When God leads, He is faithful.
— David and Taru Raj Kumar, Steve Evers