Last month in Thailand I fell in love more times than I can count. I fell in love with the town we lived in, with the view from my bedroom window, with the teachers I got to work alongside, with my host family, with the weather, with my Jesus and especially with the 30 third grade kiddos I got to call my students for the month. I was crazy about them all, but there is one in particular that will forever hold a special place in my heart.
Her name is Ring.
Since day one at the school, the students were overly generous and poured their love out over us in the form of hugs, kisses on the cheek from the tiny kindergarteners and mostly, gifts. Between the kindergarten classes that swarmed us the second we stepped outside our door in the morning and my third graders, by the end of the month I had a mountain of gifts sitting at the foot of my sleeping pad.
The gifts came mostly in the form of sweet notes and colorful drawings on lined notebook paper, flowers and leaves, bracelets and old necklace chains, origami and the occasional stuffed animal. I also received a special canvas painting of Hello Kitty.
Though I received handfuls of gifts from most students at the school, I could expect at least one from Ring every day without fail. From the first day I met her, before she knew my name and before she knew I would be her teacher, she was handing me flowers she had picked and adorning my arms with paper bracelets. As the month went on the gifts got more personal: drawings of her and I holding hands with the phrase “Rings loves teacher” written across the top, or more extravagant: beaded bracelets she made and gold chains from old necklaces she had. She even gave me a certificate she earned in school (I don’t think she was supposed to give that away…)
To give so willingly you would expect someone to have abundance, however, I know this was not the case for Ring.
Every single day that I was there the month of January, I saw Ring wearing the same pair of dirt-covered pants under her uniform. I noticed the mold stains on her school shirt. Ring did not have the luxury of giving freely, but that didn’t stop her from doing so. She gave everything she could, without the slightest hesitation, to a girl she barely knew. To someone she was never even able to have a conversation with or understand a word that came out of her mouth.
Beyond the multitude of material gifts Ring showered me with, she also showered me with love and affection, whether it be the hundreds of warm smiles she flashed my way, daily hugs I received or just holding my hand across the schoolyard. Every day she would grab my hand, pull a pen from her pocket and write across both my arms “Ring (heart) teacher”, or simply “I love you”.
One day, during my last week of school, I was outside playing with my kids in the schoolyard, soaking up as much time with them as I could before I had to say goodbye.
As we took a break from our intense game of “Chair Ball” (similar to handball), and most kids stepped away to grab a drink of water, Ring took my hand and pulled me aside. In the middle of the schoolyard she looked me straight in the eyes, holding my hand firmly in hers and as clear as day said, “Teacher, adop-me.”
“Adopt me?” I repeated back to her to make sure I had heard right.
“Yes. Adop-me. I love you.”
I stood paralyzed. Completely caught off guard I was at a loss for words. After a few seconds of silence I was able to string a sentence together. “I love you too Ring,” I told her as I pulled her in for a hug. Break time was ending at that point and everyone had begun to pick up where we had left off in the game, so Ring went back to playing with her friends. I sat myself down on the ping-pong table off to the side, watching the kids play the second half as I processed what had just happened.
I began asking myself some questions. What do I know about Ring? What kind of home life does she have? In class I had my kids draw pictures of their families and I remember hers; she drew that she had a mother and a father and a little sister, so if that is true then she isn’t without family. I know Ring is from an area of Burma where there is a lot of corruption and poverty and like other students from Burma, she must travel a full day to get to school in Thailand and find somewhere to sleep for the school week. I know she had worn the same clothes every day I was there that month.
The truth is I don’t know much about Ring apart from those small details I’ve strung together. I don’t know her story or where she comes from or what her home is like. All I know about her is her sweet smile, her kind and generous heart and the unconditional love she showed me each day.
And honestly, Ring doesn’t know much about me either. She doesn’t know my last name or my family or what part of America I’m from. She doesn’t even know what I’m doing in her country or why I’m on this trip.
“Teacher, adop-me.”
The words made my heart ache. She must have looked them up in her Thai-English dictionary that I’d seen her reading at her desk.
“What kind of situation must you find yourself in to feel that your best option is to ask a perfect stranger, who you know absolutely nothing about, to adopt you? To take you a million miles from your home and your family?” I asked my teammates that night.
One of them simply replied to my question, “she must see Jesus in you.”
How deep and how powerful is the love of Jesus that it can transcend language barriers? That without even an exchange of words, through just living life and letting His light and His joy shine through me, Ring could feel a love she’d never known before, a love she wanted to be a part of and would risk giving up everything for.
Here’s the even crazier part: while Ring was seeing Jesus in me, I was overwhelmed at the sight of Jesus in her. This month Ring taught me so much about how to love like Jesus loves.
Ring doesn’t have the money or resources to give the gifts she did and the amount she did—but that didn’t stop her from doing it. She gave abundantly in material gifts and unconditional love to someone she hardly knew.
And that’s what it’s supposed to be like. We were made to love people that way and that much: the broken, the orphaned, the widowed, the thief, the dirty and smelly, the hard-to-love and the stranger. It doesn’t matter what they look like or where they come from or if you even know their name, because if you choose to look at them and see Jesus—the one who made you, the one who saved you, the one who is crazy for you—how could you keep from loving them with all you had? From helping them out when they’re in trouble? From being a friend? From giving everything you could to them, expecting nothing in return?
I saw Jesus last month in the form of a 9-year-old Burmese girl, with bright eyes and a sweet smile. I saw Him in her generosity and in her heart that loves so abundantly and unconditionally.
I don’t know what made me so lucky to be the one Ring chose to bless with her generosity and love and to ask to take her away. And in reality, I wish that I could have taken her with me. I wish I could do something to give her a brighter future, a better education, clean clothing and the type of love that she deserves and is clearly not receiving.
But for now I’ll do what I can: pray. I’ll pray that Ring continues to chase after the joy and security that she saw in me and that it leads her to a relationship with Jesus. I’ll pray that she turns to Him to find the love that she deserves and that she will know she is beautiful and perfect in the image He created her. I will pray against the evils of this world that, in the area of Thailand and the living situation Ring is in, are real threats to her future: poverty, sex trafficking, abuse, hunger, disease…
Please join with me in praying for Ring and the thousands of other children in situations just like hers, who are desperately in need of a Savior.
My gifts that were from Ring only.
Me and my sweet girl Ring.
