My team and I spent the past four days in Kampang Chhang province of Cambodia, in a rural, largely impoverished village. We spent our days playing with the children, teaching them some English, and mostly just trying our best to show them what love looks like. We met a lot of people living in poverty and struggling to get by, but God broke my heart especially for one little boy that we met. His name was Nee.
We met Nee on our first day in the village, as we were walking around meeting people and praying for them. He was facing away from us as we walked up to where he was held in his mom’s arms. As he turned to see the visitors, I got a glimpse of his face. He quickly turned away, so I wasn’t sure if what I saw was right. He looked at us again. It was.
He had an overly large head, and his eyes were bulging out of his eye sockets. The rest of his face was sunken in. I caught myself having difficulty looking at him at first. There was snot and slobber running down his face. However, I kept looking and smiling at him, and through this moment God spoke to me. He was no longer difficult to look at. Although his face had not changed, and the drool and snot were still there, God had reminded me how He looks at the little boy. And He has no difficulty looking at him- He sees Nee as His beautiful child.
This little lesson hit close to home for me. As a baby I was born prematurely. A lot of things could have gone wrong, so my parents were very thankful that I was for the most part healthy, even though I was born so early. The only real result from all of this was that I was very close to having a cleft palate. As I grew up, this affected my teeth and resulted in some problems with my jaw. For the most part none of these problems were physically debilitating in any way. Mostly, the issue I had, was that it affected the way I looked.
As humans we place a high value on physical appearance. We are constantly trying to make ourselves look the best we can, whether that’s putting on makeup, fixing our hair, or wearing fashionable clothes. We are taught from a young age to hide or cover up any flaws in our appearance.
Then you meet a kid like Nee. There is no covering up his condition. People might even say, “I would rather never have been born than look like that.” As a teenager I did everything I could to try to make up for the physical flaws I saw in myself. However, to me, the flaw was always there still.
The truth though is that what we see as flaws from our human viewpoint of beauty is completely different from what God sees. He truly sees each of us as beautiful, uniquely made. He doesn’t mess up. We need to show children, teenagers and even adults in the church that God does not rank us in physical appearance as we do. God has a whole different concept of beauty than we could imagine. And He is using children like Nee in special ways that are going to impact our world for the better.
One of my favorite books to read my fifth graders is Wonder by RJ Palaccio. It is a story about a boy who I imagine looked very similar to Nee. The book tells of his difficulties and eventually what he learns about himself as he journeys through his first year in school with other students, fifth grade. The book is based off Natalie Merchant’s song “Wonder”
“They say I must be one of the wonders
Of god’s own creation
And as far as they can see they can offer
No explanation…
With love, with patience and with faith
She’ll make her way”
I pray that God would continue to allow me to see the world and the people in it more and more as He sees them each day.
