When Antoinette appeared at our gate I knew things weren’t good. Her right eye was black and nearly swollen shut and her lower lip was deeply split. I hadn’t seen her in several months. The Haitian family she worked for had moved out of our apartment building (where Beyond Borders had an office) and taken her with them. I had never really gotten to know her well. Antoinette was a young woman physically, but she had a childish, giggly bashfulness.

I had never been able to engage her in much of a real conversation in between her dawn-to-dusk work of washing and cooking and cleaning that is the plight of many servants in Haiti. In exchange for her work Antoinette received food, a windowless room barely big enough for the cot she slept on, and the equivalent of $15 a month, if the family managed to pay her at all. I never knew her to have a day off, and never saw her with friends. Even on Sunday mornings when her employers headed off for church, Antoinette was left behind to prepare their Sunday dinner.

Despite all this she had a bright smile and a cheerful greeting each day as we passed by her where she did most of her work in the little alcove at the bottom of the spiral staircase that led up to our office. There she could usually be found sitting with a washbasin full of clothes in front of her, endlessly scrubbing. When Antoinette left, it seemed like someone had uprooted a beautiful garden from the alcove.

Now she was back, standing at our gate. Shame and brokenness had replaced her girlish bashfulness. I greeted her, trying to hide my shock. She kept her head bowed and spoke so faintly that I could barely hear her.

With difficulty I learned that she had lost her job. She was now here to ask if I knew where she could find work. I noticed a small bundle she held in one hand and realized that for her, losing her job also meant losing her place to sleep and source of food. That little bundle contained all her earthly possessions.

I thought for a second and then told Antoinette I didn’t know anyone who could offer her work, but, trying to give some hope, said I would ask around. She nodded her head and started to walk away. I wanted to let her go, knowing that if we talked any more I risked getting sucked into whatever tragedy had swallowed her up. I was feeling terribly rushed, too. Christmas was approaching, and I was planning to return to the U.S. to be with my family in less than a week. There was so much work to finish before I left.

Maybe it was the thought of Christmas and being with my family that got the better of me. What would she be doing on Christmas day? What family would she be with? I called to her and asked her to come into the courtyard where we could talk more privately.

“What happened?” I asked.

Barely able to restrain her tears, she explained that something bad had happened and that she was now pregnant. When she told her employers, they had fired her and kicked her out, saying that she had brought trouble and shame to their home.

“Did they do this to you?” I asked, referring to her injuries. She shook her head, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“No,” she replied, her voice quivering with grief. She then explained that after she had gotten fired, she had gone to the baby’s father to tell him that she was pregnant with his child and to ask if he would take her in. He had gotten angry, denied that the baby she carried could be his child, and beat her up, saying that she was just trying to trap him because she knew he had a job. He worked as a clerk in the auto parts store owned by Antoinette’s former employers. He told her that if he saw her again he would “finish her off.”

This had happened a couple of days earlier. Antoinette would have slept that night in the street had it not been for a kind young woman who had seen her injuries and taken her in. This new friend lived in a single room that she rented in a crowded neighborhood nearby. Unfortunately, she could only keep Antoinette temporarily. This kind woman who had rescued Antoinette was a young mother and a prostitute. She needed the room for her work.

It was then that I realized Antoinette’s real reason for coming to us. She probably knew we didn’t have a job to offer, but she did know that directly above the little room she used to live in, we had a tiny servant’s room that we used as a storage space. I felt myself getting sucked in.

In an effort to extricate myself, I asked if she didn’t have friends or family anywhere who could help her. She explained that she hadn’t seen her mother in years. She was the oldest child in her family. She never knew her father. Her mother had given her away to work for a family when she was still a little girl. She had been a restavèk, a domestic servant child, like those we were working to help through our child literacy program. She eventually ended up in Port-au-Prince working for another family that she then left when she found a paying job, the job she had with our former neighbors. I was ashamed I had never learned her story until then.

Antoinette moved into our storage room. We got it cleaned up and put a little bed and table in it for her. It was a temporary situation, I explained, until we could find a better arrangement.

While back visiting my family, I remember reflecting on the Gospel of Luke’s description of a girl who was like Antoinette in many ways. She was a poor, unwed, pregnant girl from the two-bit town of Nazareth, in the hinterland of Judea, a Third World nation under the thumb of the Roman Empire. After learning that she had conceived, Mary fled to another town in the “uplands of Judah,” to her cousin Elizabeth’s home, presumably to avoid bringing dishonor to her family and punishment from the local religious authorities.

Unlike Antoinette, Mary found great hope in her pregnancy. The angel had told this humble Jewish girl that she carried in her body the long-awaited Messiah, a king whose reign would have no end.

I returned to Haiti the end of December. After several more twists and turns, with Antoinette suffering the indignities of poverty at each turn, we paid for her to take the bus trip back to her mother’s home in a remote part of Haiti. There weren’t any other choices.

We never heard back from her, never heard how her reunion with her family went. I pray that all went well. And I continue to pray that one day Mary’s song will also be sung by Antoinette:

My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:47-55)

I’m sorry this story about Antoinette doesn’t have a cheerful Hallmark-Christmas-Special ending. But still, we can find hope, knowing that it is because of the suffering of people like her—people like you and me—that Jesus was born. He was born in a stable, and his first bed was a feeding trough. Throughout his life he was especially close to the most troubled and broken. He endured our suffering and humiliation and ultimately our death.

In this world that is still shrouded in darkness and despair, he is our shining hope. He invites us to find room with him among the downtrodden and share our lives with the outcast. It is among them that we find him still at work, still suffering in solidarity, still sharing his life.

To really celebrate Christmas is to make room for this one in our lives and in our world, to come bearing him the gift of ourselves in an outpouring to the oppressed. This is where we find hope and the deep enduring joy of Christmas.

We pray that your Christmas is full of joy, both in the giving and in the receiving of God’s grace.

Antoinette’s troubles can be traced back to two things—being sent from home to work as a domestic servant while still a child and being denied an education. Without her family and an education she was defenceless against exploitation and despair. The situation Antoinette faced is not unique. According to the International Labor Organization, there is a link between the domestic servitude of girls and their sexual exploitation not just in Haiti, but worldwide.

Please join us this Christmas in offering some of Haiti’s most vulnerable children and their families the gift of hope and a brighter future. Give a gift this Christmas that will make a lasting difference in someone’s life. Thank you!