My great grandmother, Clara, was an artist. I only know this because of the drawing that hangs in my parent's living room. It is one of the best likenesses of a child in pencil I've seen. She is beautiful.
Claire's son, my grandfather, was also an artist. I know this because when I was a child I saw him carving animals out of wood. They were so lifelike. When he died, I received the beautiful duck he carved when I was a little girl.
My grandfather's daughter, my mom, is also an artist. I know this because she taught private and group art classes in our basement when I was a child and she would let me watch The Sound of Music upstairs to keep me occupied.
My mother's daughter, my sister, Christina is also an artist. I know this because I have seen her take a piece of paper and create a masterpiece right before my eyes from her own mind and heart in just moments.
I've always known that I am missing two things to be a very talented artist. One is patience. My mother has the ability to sit for hours and months to make something beautiful. The other is the ability to put down on paper what I see only in my mind. I must see something to recreate the art that is already made in front of me. So I think, why even bother?
Regardless, I enjoyed art class growing up in school and spent a lot of time there. But when that was over, so was the art.
It's been 18 years since I've picked up a pencil to draw. And that night would be my last in my home on stilts in the Cambodian jungle. There is a little boy named Paleong that lives a few doors down the road. He wakes up very early and comes to this home every morning a 5am to whisper, "Jen, ju play?" He wants to play. Most of the time he just wants to take photos on my camera or play games on my ipod. I decided that I would make him some things to color so that in the mornings we could do something together after we held hands to pray and drank our Nescafe and Milo.
So what would I create for him on our last morning together? I was out of ideas. I had one sheet of paper left. It was late, my bag was already packed and I was in my mosquito net with my head lamp on ready for bed. So I began to draw a picture of the face that I have been praying God would call to bring Jesus to many in Cambodia, Paleong.
And then my head lamp burned out. It didn't even last 3 months! And that night, really? So all I had now was the light from my ipod. I'm was thinking how strange it was for me to draw. I have never had the desire to draw since high school. And I have been intimidated of all of the talent that is behind me. And then of course there was no light. That's kind of a problem. But I kept drawing. And I kept praying over Paleong while I drew.
The next morning, Paleong was as delighted with my drawing as I hoped he would be. He laughed seeing himself on the page. After our goodbyes full of tears, I saw that little boy run down the stairs crying to his mother holding that sketch as they walked back home through the sugar cane fields.
Later I had thought it so strange that I drew. I would never choose that. I probably wasn't the best person for the job to create a likeness as sweet as Paleong. But as we drove away from our house on stilts in a van I thought about the memories I made there.
I remembered that I had visited Paleong's house earlier that month. I wanted to meet his mother. She had sounded like a harsh and cold woman. When we went to visit, she wasn't there. We went again. She wasn't there. But as I walked around the house with Paleong beside me, I saw the only picture hanging on the wall. I took it and asked if it was his mother. It was a simple pencil sketch of his mother when she was young. There it hung next to the bed.
I wonder if it was God using me to draw a likeness of a sweet boy to hang up right next to his mother's face. Her face looked sweet and innocent. Later she would experience cruelty and lose all of her innocence and then Paleong would be the result of that. Who could love her now? She stayed unmarried with her child.
I never got to meet her. But maybe the drawing for Paleong was just as much for his mother as it was for Paleong. God made no mistake when he made Paleong and God did not abandon his mother in the jungle. Because He fearfully and wonderfully created them both in the image of God. Not by pencil, not by head lamp, not with the limited resources of the simple Khmer life, not even during the night when He was tired, but with all of the limitless glory, power and love He could pour into 2 sweet and innocent children in the jungle.
Paleong and his mother.
