Why would God send an all women’s team to a troubled boys home?
I asked myself this question when we first got our ministry assignment for this month. We have been in Colombia for only a week working for an organization that rescues children from the street, housing and feeding them, and giving them the opportunity to restore their lives through a program of education and training. The vision for this organization is that these children will choose a healthy lifestyle and become responsible adults that are assets to their family and society.
While this may sound nice and easy, let me tell you the statistics we are working with:
– Medellin has the second highest number of street kids in Colombia.
– While the majority of street kids are between the ages of 12-17, there are many below the age of 7.
– The majority of street children are sick, use drugs, and have been sexually abused.
– Many street children smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, sniff an industrial glue, and use marijuana, cocaine, and crack.
– In order to pay for their food, drug habits, and shelter, many kids beg, rob, recycle, or work in sex exploitation.
– The most common answer that street children give for why they have left their homes is because of physical or psychological abuse by their parents. Other reasons they say for having left their homes are because they wanted to live with their friends in the streets, because their families are very poor, or because their families also live in the streets.
We have been staying on a farm that is the home to 5 boys, several dedicated workers and volunteers, a psychologist, a social worker, and several farm animals such as cows, horses, pigs, goats, and dogs. It is a truly amazing story of how this got started, but to sum it up the founders felt a calling from the Lord to work for, protect, and care for the street children who are abandoned, abused, and exploited. Currently these are the only boys here due to licensing issues, so that’s where we come in. Our goal here is to help get the farm up to licensing standards so that more boys can be housed here. The Colombian government has given this ministry a run for its money, but God has continued to be faithful and provide. Our days consist of different manual labor projects, and when the boys come home from school we do their chores with them, organize recreational activities, help them with their homework, and do devotionals with them before bedtime.
To say this experience has been heart wrenching would be an understatement. These boys have quite literally been through hell. All of them come from physical or sexual abuse. The only conflict resolution that they know is violence. They have trouble with authority and do not know how to receive love. They are angry and lost… and who could blame them? They have had their childhoods stolen, and been through so much pain already. Yet I see so much good in each one of these boys, so much life, so many walls that they want to break through. They have so much hurt to heal from.
There is one boy in particular, whose name I will not mention for safety and legal reasons, that has had such a strong pull on my heart. He is thirteen, and the oldest boy here; all the other boys are significantly younger than him. The first night that we arrived he was in a huge fight, and a few days later we were told he was going to be sent back to his home on a short suspension, and that he could choose to come back if he wanted to. You may be thinking to yourself that this is a harsh punishment, but the reality is that there is nothing to take away from these boys to discipline them, and when the safety of others are in question, this is the only way to get through the rebellion. The workers here love these boys, and you could see the fear and how much they dreaded having to send him back for a few days.
I was so distraught, I woke up early the day he was leaving and spent the morning in prayer. God impressed on me to write him a note to take with him, so I did, and had one of my teammates translate it into Spanish. As I walked through the pasture and up to the cabin, I saw him sitting outside on the porch. When I look at him I see this angry, misunderstood, and rejected kid… trying to make sense of this life. I looked at him and saw my thirteen year old self, let down by the world and the people in it that I loved the most, with so much anger inside and not knowing any healthy way to let it out. My heart broke for him… for the unfairness of it all, for the paths laid out before him and the worry of which one he would choose. I thought about the painful path that my own life took, and wished more than anything that I could make him understand that there is so much more, that life doesn’t have to be this way, that he can find a way to heal and break free. When I was his age there was no one that could get through to me, no matter how hard they tried to break through the walls, and at age 24 I still struggle with receiving and giving love, and putting my trust in people in authority because of all the times I have been let down. How do you break through the walls?
I gave him the note, hugged him, and told him in broken Spanish that I hoped to see him in a few days. That night I had a dream, and all I could see was his face and that he was in trouble. The next day, during our morning meeting, we were told that he was coming back. My five seconds of joy was dismissed when we were told why. Upon arrival to his home, his drug addict mother, who happens to already hate him, was high and in such a fury that he was back, that she picked up the nearest piece of wood she could find and started beating him, hard. Luckily the social worker was still nearby, and he ran after her crying that he wanted to come back, and there was no way that she was going to leave him there. Laws here are very different than in America. He was lucky, some boys never make it back.
When I saw him I ran up behind him and gave him a big hug, and when he turned around there were scratches all over his face, and bruising. So much anger welled up inside of me. So many thoughts running through my head… the biggest ones being why and how… why life could be so cruel and how on earth do we make it through. Why are innocent children exposed to such cruelty, and how are they supposed to then after be healed from it?
In my anger God spoke to me gently… it hurts me to see this too, but this is the price of free will. I will never give up on him, I have plans to prosper him, I want to be his strength and what he depends on, I want to heal him, and all you can do Julia is love him. Look at your own life, look at what you went through, I never stopped loving and pursuing you no matter how much you resented me, I set you free, I am turning your ashes into beauty, I am going to use even the most horrible and painful parts of your life to reach into places that others cannot, and I am your strength when your flesh is weak. You don’t have to understand, you just have to trust me.
I had seen him drawing the first day I arrived, and so I asked my teammate if I could borrow her coloring book, charcoal, paper, and watercolors for him to use. We gave it to him, and as I was painting inside the cabin I watched him through the window, he was sitting on the bench, in a trance, drawing, and it was like the rest of the world no longer mattered. He is so talented, and I feel like art is a good thing for him to channel his feelings into. He was so proud when he got done that we hung it up on the wall.
I believe God put us women here to show these boys that although their mothers failed at loving them, that there are still women who love them and care for them, who they can feel safe with, and to show them that not all love is tainted sexually, to show them that true authority doesn’t involve physical abuse, and to love them in a way that they can view women as something valuable, instead of worthless, hurtful, and objects with no value.
I believe that God not only put me here to love these boys, but also to show me His love and to continue healing things still broken inside of myself.
