The team I was working with and I walked into the yellow home that housed young girls and was an open door to anyone in San Felix, Panama that needed it. The team had been there for a few days now and I walked in late, not knowing anyone, and kind of appeared like that weird girl who showed up late for school and made a nuisance. I made my rounds to the girls that lived there and the ministry host and slowly started bridging my new found relationships with them.
I began to have conversations with the host and found little ways to help around the house when I saw him. This young, big brown eyed, Mowgli-esque, shirtless boy – he pokes around the corner to try and catch glimpses of who the heck we are, but is so confused as to why these six North Americans are here. The girls on the team tell me that today is the first day they have ever seen him at the house and they don’t have a clue as to who he is. He tip toed around the house, observing, stealthy to not be noticed, quiet as if he made any noise we would then recognize him. My curious self seems to trump his and I follow him outside. I entertain the idea of a possible conversation with my best, Spanglish game face on, and it actually works….not only does it work, but this guy is ready to go.
He takes off in a dead sprint to the back of the house and comes darting back with a paper airplane in his hand. With all of his might he pulls his arm back and launches his paper avion toward me and it goes sailing. It was as if everything slowed down, movie like, where things pause in the background and you just see a camera zoom in on this paper plane – it soared like a Boeing-777 and landed straight in my hands. As if it knew the runway was coming and made the ease into my palms. This was the moment. This was when Roy became my boy and we became soul friends. This was when we gasped for air at the extreme sight of seeing this paper fly and land on command. This was the start of hours of building new planes to see if they could fly better, to seeing if we could put things in the planes to ‘pilot’ the paper, to being children. As it started to pour down buckets of rain from the Panamanian sky, Roy and I ran in the rain, sat under gutters to get even more wet than normal, had foot races to see how far we could go in the rain, took pictures in the rain, and accidentally got our precious plane caught in the monsoon.
Roy taught me something about being alive again. I’m not sure what had happened along the way the past few weeks, but I fell head first into a pile of dirt. The dust got kicked up while I was down there, it turned into a plume around my face, fogged up my eye sight, and seeped its way into my mouth – drying everything up. The moisture was robbed from my body, the living water was being deprived from me, and I wasn’t able to think straight. And then it’s like God knew what my soul needed to bring me back to life; a 5 year old, paper airplanes, and a literal monsoon.
Each day I would come back to the yellow house and meet my new soul friend. Greeted with his shy antics that were then followed up with tickle fights, hide and go seek, soccer games, or just telling me he doesn’t understand my Spanish (I gave it a good go while I could). I knew in the back of my mind that I was only here with this team for ten short days, but Roy brought me back to life…I wanted to enjoy every moment I could.
The day came quicker than I could anticipate for myself…that day to say goodbye to the team, the host, and to my Roy. The team (and fluent Spanish speakers) all walked ahead of me and I turned back to the house to attempt my best at saying and getting them to understand this is my last day (although the team is staying for 20 more days).
I give Roy my usual ‘give me a hug’ look I give him and he runs over to hug me goodbye…I Spanglish it up and try to tell them I won’t be coming back…
….no one understands. I had to bite my lip, say goodbye to my Roy, feel the tears begin to swell behind my eyes, and just…walk away. I’ve never had a goodbye quite exist the way this one did. Ever. I walked away; quiet, sulking behind my glazed over tears, hoping no one would ask about it. As I walked into our little house, I naturally headed straight for the bedroom to just think. I began to write it all down when it hit me.
Roy isn’t just representing Roy, but the squad. For these past 5 months, I’ve been invested in 30, beautiful, Jesus loving, truth speaking, loving souls. And somewhere along the way, they stole my heart. Was it in the midst of folding paper airplanes, shouting prayers in the middle of the night, swimming in every country just to tangibly feel God’s power within the ocean, standing on rooftops to pray over a nation and watch the sunrise, singing over one another for hours, to being swept up to a river to tell a good story and celebrate one another – it was in the big and the little. The beautiful and hellacious. It was here where we learned to love one another.
It was here that I remembered I was leaving in 15 days. That I’ll be parting from this journey to watch from a distance and the thing is, just like Roy, they might not understand. Actually, a lot of people might not understand. Leaving something behind that may not truly understand why you were there in the first place, why only 10 days (or 5 months), who really are you even, what significance did you teach them if any, and to just…walk away. It’s been the hardest yet most beautiful thing I’ve been a part of. This group of radical lovers taught me to love pure, they taught me to really fight for one another, to have patience, to sit in the hard with one another, they taught me to dream radically again, to think, they taught me to go for it, to be bold, they taught me to jump, to write it out, they challenged me, they loved me, and just like Roy…they’ve brought me back to life in the midst of dust.
