This month my team and I are serving at Sarah’s Covenant Homes in Andhra Pradesh, India. This home rescues children and adults who have been abandoned due to disabilities. When we arrived and heard that this would be where we were serving I pictured children with autism or other types of mental disabilities that were clean and able to move and walk around. I was totally unprepared for the children that we met.
My team and team Yebo arrived at Victory Home, the largest of Sarah’s Covenant Homes , and were overwhelmed by screaming, jumping children and young adults. They were so excited to met us and say hello. I made friends with Wendy immediately. She calls all the girls “akka” which means big sister, and is so full of life and joy. After dancing with her for a little while, I wondered into the first room to the right of the courtyard which was filled with little baby girls flat on their backs due to spina bifida. I can’t really describe the heartbreak that I felt over their suffering. I know baby girls well. They are supposed to be full of life, learning to walk and play and talk. These little ones are so still. Most of them sleep all day. They can’t even move enough to wave flies out of their faces. It is heartbreaking.
I picked up one of the little girls and carried her into the boys’ room, passing Meredith with tears in her eyes as she left. This truly is the worst room in the house. It is filled with little boys between the ages of 6 to maybe 16, lying in beds that are shared. Many of them are in the fetal position, rocking back and forth. The ones that can crawl were on the floor, pulling themselves along with their arms because they can’t move their legs. Some are blind, some are scarred, some do not move. They are all broken little boys somewhere around the age of my nephew Tyler. They should be running. They should be fighting and spitting and catching creatures and peeing outside like little boys do. And they aren’t. They won’t ever do these things. They’ve never done these things. They were abandoned and living in government housing, many of them lying on floors instead of beds until they were rescued by SCH. I burst into tears. Their suffering is truly terrible and I felt overwhelmed by them.
I left the room with the little boys after getting to know a few of them by simply sitting by them since they cannot speak. I carried the little girl I had been holding back to her little bed and then went back to dancing with the older girls in the courtroom. Almost immediately one of the girls I was dancing with began to have a seizure. She had one more before we left for the day. I got into our auto overwhelmed by suffering, heartbreak and the desire to run away. It would be a lie for me to say that I like India because I don’t. It would be a lie to say that I wake up looking forward to walking back into Victory House and encountering so much suffering every day because I don’t. I am so looking forward to this month ending. But while I am here, this is what I am learning:
I am like those children flat on their backs unable to feed themselves or change their own diapers. And so are you. The gospel teaches that we could not save ourselves from our own sin and so One drew near who was able. When I walk into the Victory House I am so aware of the fact that my legs and arms have strength in them for the children who have none. Jesus’ righteousness is the same. I have none. He has it all. He has picked me up and carried me by His own strength and because of His own grace to the Father.
When I carry these children…
When I laugh with them…
When I watch women feed them through feeding tubes…
When their diapers need to be changed…
When I know that they have lice…
When their legs are covered with wounds from dragging themselves across the floor…
When we work on sign language…
When I sit on a bed with a little child that cannot move…
When I want to run and forget that these children exist…
It is good for me to remember my spiritual state was such…
I was unable to move…
I was covered in filth from sin…
I was unable to clean myself…
To love me required being made dirty by me…
and I was loved lavishly….
So, Jesus teach me to love the least of these….
Picture taken by Caitlin Sickler
