I never knew her name.
She was one of countless children who shrieked with joy when we would pass by and crowded in droves around the pale feet walking down their road four times a day.
I remember she was tiny. No more than two or three years old. A slip of a toddler, a bright yet dull pink dress hanging off her diminutive frame.
Walking with purpose, we were headed home after a long first week of ministry, too tired to pick up the many children begging to be held. Children, recognized and familiar even to our tired eyes, hurried to walk beside us once more as we passed by their homes. My eyes roved the neighborhood, trying to soak in every detail as we passed by the thin dirt streets too quickly to truly cement the sight into my memory. As I was searching the skyline, something small impacted my shins and held fast. Stopped in my tracks by the small weight now attached to my legs, I looked down to see the little girl in the bright yet dull pink dress. As I stared down, she gripped tighter, locked her ankles to shackle mine, and burrowed her cheek into my knees.
At her dogged determination to cling to me as tightly as possible, I laughed, heart filled with mirth and fondness for her efforts.
“Alright,” I laughed as I hugged her as best I could with her still clinging to my legs, “thank you, but I really need to go!”
Indeed, the group was rapidly pulling ahead and moving farther down the road.
I attempted to take a few steps forward, but couldn’t move my feet, because she still had her ankles locked tightly around mine.
Growing slightly concerned at how fast I was being left behind, but still full of a strange affection for the little girl in the bright yet dull pink dress, I laughed again and repeated my statement.
She shook her head into my legs. I smiled sadly, and gently pried her hands off. However, she made no move to move her legs, and so I began laughing once more as I tried to lift the deadweight of this very determined little girl. I heaved her a couple steps before having to let her down, where she immediately returned to her previous position of wrapped around my shins.
“Hey, c’mon darling,” I told her gently. “I really have to go now.”
Suddenly, a loud voice yelled from a couple feet away. An older woman was sitting on the edge of a small concrete wall, and as I turned to face the origin of the shout, she stood, swaying slightly. She barked again loudly toward me, and immediately the little girl on my legs released her hold, and darted around to hide behind my silhouette. When a man stood beside the woman and yelled something in Nyanja, she flinched, grabbed my hand and gazed up at me with the most vulnerable eyes I’d ever seen.
Filled unbidden with a spirit of righteous fury and intense love, a thought ran through my mind. I didn’t remember this thought until much later, or even realize it wasn’t mine.
“How dare my child be treated with anything except my greatest love.”
Almost as if a passenger in my own body to the righteous love that unexpectedly filled it, I looked straight at the man and woman, reached down and picked up the little girl in the bright yet dull pink dress, cradling her in my arms. I kissed her forehead firmly, gripped her tighter as she buried her face into my neck, looked over one last time to the aggressors, and walked forward.
As I walked away, the little girl in the bright yet dull pink dress buried her face in my neck, and trembled. I ran a hand over her tightly woven braids, shushing her heartbroken cries and pressing kisses against her forehead, trying desperately to communicate to her that she was so so loved.
Tears wet my own eyes as I asked her what her name was. Her murmured reply was muffled to incomprehension, and I couldn’t find it within myself to ask again, so I pressed another firm kiss upon her head, and tucked her face as far as I could shelter underneath my chin.
I carried her all the way to the end of the road, as far as I could take her. The longest amount of time I could stretch holding her in my arms and making sure she knew she was loved.
I left her there, standing at the edge of the road, watching me walk away. After that week, I never saw her again.
At the moment, I couldn’t have explained to you what compelled me to so abruptly and wholly to carry out the actions I did. Looking back, I know in my heart that the spirit of the Lord entered my body, so righteously and profoundly disgusted at the lack of love His Beloved daughter was receiving, and so utterly determined to show her beyond a doubt that she was loved more than anything in the world by the God who had created it and everything within it.
