What if you had never experienced a warm shower? What if your family looked like 80 other kids as brothers and sisters and 10-15 “aunts” who raised you? What if eating out as a family just wasn’t possible? What if your first memories of your parents was of them leaving you…or better yet, that you couldn’t even remember them because they abandoned you? What if the first four years of your life, you were kept in a cage left to fend for yourself? What would your view of hope be? What would your view of God be? “Love doesn’t exist” was one of the things that I heard this month. I heard, “why should I love myself if my parents didn’t even love me enough to keep me?” So many kids didn’t even want to get to know us or talk to us because they didn’t want to get close and have other person close to them leave AGAIN to never come back. What must that feel like? I have had it so good back home. We get on our journey and want to complain about things that we are missing from home like warm showers, but what if I never had the opportunity to know what a warm shower was like? How often do we take our lives for granted? How often do we complain about not having the best smart phone, or the biggest tv, or the nicest clothes? What if you didn’t have a tv, or had never gone to the movies?
I’d like to talk about two of the kids I met this month. One of them is Lolina. Lolina is 4 years old and according to the orphanage has been there for about 6 months. She got there in September of 2013 and for the first four years of her life, she had been kept in a cage. Her dad or grandpa, or whoever was “taking care” of her, would leave the house for work and tie her leg to the inside of a cage. I wasn’t able to see the pictures that Tio Fidel talked about, but this is how it was described to me. She was removed from her home and brought to Casa de Esperanza (House of Hope) not being able to walk or talk. Her muscles were atrophied which means that they were unusable because she never used them. She still can’t walk by herself, or talk besides grunts and I wonder if her life could have been any different. I wonder if she was born this way, or if life at the young age of 4 has already beaten her up because she had never experienced love.
Raquel is 15 years old and she has talked to me a few different times this month and even came to my room crying one night. She feels like there is no point to life. That no one loves her and that no one ever has. She asked me why she should love herself when her parents didn’t even want her. She can’t see hope. She can’t see love. She is surrounded by people that care about her, but she can’t see past the brokeness and hurt that abandonment causes, and she is one of MANY.
So what do we do? Do we give up? Do we say that its too much to do and quit before we ever start? Do we say that we have to leave anyway and that we don’t want to hurt them more than what they have already been hurt? Do we call them a lost cause?
I can’t speak for Lolina….and she can’t speak for herself, but I have a hope that one day she will. The day that she walks is not far off as she can almost stand up by herself ( and she can if she holds onto something.) Her face lights up when she gets hugs and as she gets help walking out of the door. She loves to be out even just crawling around. She doesn’t want to be trapped anymore.
The letter I read from Raquel today as I left said that it was worth it. This month, my time with her was important to her, and that she was starting to hear that she was beautiful and priceless. THat she was a child of God and that he loves her. All I could tell the kids as we were leaving was that God loves them soooo much and that our team wouldn’t be there if He didn’t. That He brought us to love them and tell them how much He loves them.
SOMEONE has to speak hope. SOMEONE has to speak love, and SOMEONE has to speak life. Sometimes the things that we do seem so insignificant, and you wonder if its worth it. Who will walk with Lolina? Who will show her that she matters? I can’t know how this month afected Lolina from her mouth, but I know that she has developed so much even just in a matter of a month, and I know that it mattered to Raquel. Thank you so much for sending me and please pray for Casa de Esperanza.
