This Girl

We drove through the darkness with the snow blowing against the windshield.

“I just need to think,” she said.

The darkness weighed down on me. I always grope for the right words while knowing that really no words are the right ones and at the same time any words that are full of love are the right ones.

She’s seventeen and pregnant. She doesn’t need a lot of words. She needs someone to care.

“You have my number,” I say. “Let me know if you need anything”

She says thank you. We chat about her boyfriend and her mom and the GED she is studying for.

“We just don’t know if we can keep the baby or not” she explains.

I am surprised by how much I love this girl. By how hard it is for me to drop her off in front of the dark house.

What does her future look like, -this girl with thoughtful eyes?

What does the future hold for the baby that she loves?

There are tears in my eyes and prayers in my heart.

This Child

If you came with me to children’s ministry and met Tyrone, you’d probably wonder why we even let him come.

Sometimes we wonder why we let him come.

Sometimes all we see when we look at him is the scowl on his face, the anger in his eyes, the cuss words coming from his mouth. The tobacco in his pocket that he’s chewed since he was 3 years old.

Sometimes we forget that he’s only 12 years old. That he’s still a little boy, really.

Sometimes.

But sometimes we remember.

We remember the child who stood outside the fence because he was too afraid to come in.

We remember the child who bolted out the door because it was simply too much.

We remember the young man who paced up and down the road in an effort to get his anger under control.

And we remember other things. The way his mother curses him when he comes home. The fact that his dad has been in jail “a whole lot of times”. We remember that he’s two years behind in school thanks to his parents irresponsibility.

But the saddest story, to me, is why he doesn’t go to church.

“Do you go to church on Sundays?” Sharon asked.

“You know,” he answered. “I used to but I just don’t anymore. You see, my mom’s boyfriend is so annoying and when I’d come home he’d be like ‘oh so you’re going to be a good boy now, going to church, how nice. Be a good boy’ and he’d just make fun of me and it made me so mad and I’d just cuss him out and you know, I just couldn’t handle that. It just ain’t right, I can’t cuss straight outa church so I just quit going.”

“Why don’t y’all have kids church every night? he asked.

And I remember the sad, afraid little boy beneath the angry young man and I want to cry.

What will happen to Tyrone?

Where will he be in 20 years from now?

I don’t know.

I can only hope and pray that God will reach down and touch his life.

I pray that his anger could be channeled into an anger against sin.

That his energy could be channeled into building the kingdom of God.

That his leadership skills could be channeled into leading the church.

This child is a child of potential

For good. Or for evil.

Pray that he would choose the good.

Pray that God could be the father he so much wants in his life.

Not Too far from Here

Not too far from here lives a girl with cold eyes and a hardened heart. Her dad is in jail, her mom is somewhere but she doesn’t know where. She lives with her dad’s ex-girlfriend supposedly but most of the time she’s staying with one friend or another. She’s been abandoned. Raped. And in and out of foster care seven times. She cries, but she’s not ready to share her pain, not yet.

Not too far from here is young girl who lives with her aunt, and her aunt’s boyfriend’s father. Her cousins use her as a scapegoat. Her “papaw” beats her for for minor infractions until she’s covered with bruises. She’s been taken from her mother thanks to all of her mother’s boyfriends but life hasn’t gotten better. Her face is sadness personified. Even her smiles are edged in sadness.

Not too far from here lives a young man who tells me casually that no one would care anyhow if he died. I can tell by the flatness of his voice that he believes the words. “I’d care” I say.

Uselessly.

He doesn’t believe me either.

Not too far from here is a nine- year old who says she worships the devil. And why not? Her father, the man who should protect her, has raped her more times than she can count. She cuts lines into her arms, the physical pain helping her to forget the emotional pain for at least a little bit. Her only hope is the tiny one that perhaps he’ll be put back in jail eventually.

Not too far from here is a little girl whose grandma is to old to climb the stairs to tuck her into bed. No one comes when she has nightmares. Her daddy and her uncle fight. The police come. She’s afraid and there is no one to hold her close.

The stories pile up, slowly, the ball of pain gets larger with every layer, like snowballs rolling down the snowy hill. And suddenly, without warning, the weight is too much, and the haunting does not leave.

These children.

We love them.

Some nights it’s hard to sleep.

Some days are hard to stay focused.

And you realize that if you had lived that life, you would not be the heroic survivor.

I would be the bitter young girl with hardened eyes.

And suddenly you question your own identity because you are not the person you always imagined yourself to be.

And than there’s guilt.

What can you really do? You always thought you would be the person who would help, who would do something.

And then you come face to face with your own helplessness.

And you realize there is nothing you can do.

You cannot make it better.

You cannot even make it stop.

You are helpless.

I should be positive probably. I should say that God can fix it. Because He can. But that only brings more questions. Why does he allow it to happen in the first place?

Pray for the children tonight.

Pray for those of us who carry the weight of their stories.

So Blessed

I walked through the dreary rain out toward my little red car. My arms full of dirty towels and my coffee cup. I’d just spilled half of the coffee down the front of my dress. I dumped the dirty towels into the back seat of the car and turned to look through the gloom at the tall brick building, It’s dim light barely penetrating.

And I thought “I still can’t believe I’m this blessed”.

It’s crazy. I think sometimes I must be crazy. Why and how can the most chaotic parts of my life make me feel the most blessed?

It wasn’t because I was comparing my life to theirs – these lovely broken children.

It was because I couldn’t believe I was the one privileged to be here.

The one to see the brokenness.

The one to feel the pain.

The one who cries herself to sleep because why is no one caring about the kids?

It’s a privilege.

Most of the time they hide the hurt under toughness and bravado.

I am blessed to see the pain.

I’m blessed too because sometimes, in tiny glimpses, I see God.

And I see that he can.

He can heal the hurt.

He can wipe the tears.

He can bring hope to the hopeless.

It’s in the overheard conversation “I was so scared, but you know what? I prayed…”

“You prayed?!”

“Yeah, I said ‘God please help me'”.

And I know that a year ago this child would never have thought to pray no matter what was happening.

I see it in the angry young man who stalks up and down the road to calm himself and yet when we gather in a circle to sing he sings loudly “We’ve got the power in the name of Jesus”.

And I know, that no matter where he chooses to go from here. No matter where life may lead, those words are now graven deep in his heart. I believe God will let those words follow him, perhaps even haunt him. And I am thankful.

I am so blessed.

What is more blessed than to be the face, the hands, that come to the mind of a child, when they think of Jesus.

“Whooo loves you?”

Those were the words on the owl craft tonight. We pulled the wings apart to see the answer.

Jesus!

I put my arms around the angry child. “Put it in your bedroom,” I whispered. “then you can always look at it and think ‘Jesus loves me!’ because he does”.

She stared straight ahead, not looking at me but I saw her go out the door with the owl in her hand.

Jesus loves her.

And when she finally understands, he can take away her anger and heal her tiny broken heart.

Sometimes your Nose just Hurts

Sometimes kids club is showing kids how to return good for evil with cheetos. If I steal a cheeto from you, that means now you have to give me two, right?

Sometimes kids club is exploding cans of pop and sticky messes all over the floor.

Sometimes kids club is separating 3 big boys who are in the middle of a fight.

Sometimes it’s picking up overly excited little girls who can’t stop chattering.

Sometimes it’s changing diapers that should have been changed a long time ago.

And sometimes it means having a sore nose for a full week afterwards.

I don’t think my nose is actually broken. I can’t feel any broken bones at least. But when I collided with a child’s head during playtime, I was sure my nose was going to start spouting blood.

It didn’t.

It’s been sore ever since though.

I’ve never had such a weird problen before. It hurts when I laugh and it hurts if I lie down the wrong way. And it’s incredibly painful to blow my nose. So strange.

Otherwise, as long as I leave it alone it’s fine. And then I touch it unthinkingly and I say to myself “self, do not do that again” but I’m one of those people who rub their face while they’re thinking so pretty soon I do it again.

So the lesson is don’t run into someone’s head. Also don’t develop a habit of rubbing your face.

Oh, and the final one: Don’t volunteer to help with kids club unless your willing to have a broken nose. Well, at least a sore one.