This is a long one, as are most of my blogs and I apologize for that, but if you ever hear anything I say this may be the most important, so tough it out for me.
You might be reading this, and everything feels okay to you. Maybe you’re at work, maybe you’re at home, maybe you just ate lunch. Maybe you’ve had a bad day, maybe you’ve had a great day, but the world doesn’t feel any different to you. The world is still turning, you’ll still get off work at 5, you’ll still have pot roast for supper, and you still have that dentist appointment next week. Your world hasn’t stopped.
But mine did. Surely you must’ve felt it too? My heart shattered into a million pieces today. Surely you must have heard it? It’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard, and it keeps playing in my head over and over again. It’s the sound of a goodbye.
Goodbyes are hard, we all know that, and I’ve said hundreds in the last 7 months. Vince in the Philippines stopped the world. Sokheng in Cambodia stopped the world. Waliko and Chimango in Malawi stopped the world. But this time it was different. You see, I loved all of those children more than I ever expected to, which made it so hard to leave them. But the thing is I never knew how much I was going to love them, and so it was like ripping off a bandaid. I didn’t anticipate the wound. It was painful at first, but it quickly dulled, and now it only stings a little when I think about it.
This time I said a different kind of goodbye. It was the kind of goodbye that sticks in your throat because maybe if you don’t actually say the word it won’t hurt. But it did. All of those kids mentioned above I spent every single day with for a month. I had time with them. I justified my grief by telling myself I had enough time to love them. This time though, I didn’t have enough time. I had Kistofo for about 2 hours a day for three days spread out over the period of a month. 6 hours total. A lifetime with this kid wouldn’t have been enough, but 6 hours felt cheap. It felt useless. Kistofo is a handicapped boy in a wheelchair in one of the more rural, poor areas in Bulawayo. He’s smart as a whip and has a laugh that sounds like what I imagine the laugh of God to sound like, a lilting musical sound that encompasses the essence of what joy is. It’s so pure and so genuine. I’ve never met another person on this earth as purely joyful as Kistofo.
The first time I saw Kistofo he had been pushed into the back of the room, the breaks put down on his chair, and left there to watch as the other kids laughed and played and sang songs and answered questions. I watched him watch the other kids with joy on his face. Nobody wanted to ignore Kistofo, they just didn’t know how to include him, so they didn’t. Honestly I didn’t know how to either. But God didn’t care what I knew, and so He told me to go and sit beside Kistofo. I knew the danger in that. I knew that if I let myself love this little boy it was going to destroy me. Kistofo isn’t the kind of kid you forget, he isn’t the kind of kid you only love a little bit for a little while. He’s the kind of kid who changes your life forever. I wanted badly to be selfish and save myself from the heartbreak and stay right where I was. There was a room full of kids to choose from that needed to be loved too; I could pick any one of them instead. My heart’s been broken more this year than in my whole life, but I knew this one would hurt worse, it would cut deeper. I was afraid, but I picked up the knife anyway. I chose Kistofo.
I walked up to that sweet angel of a boy, took off his breaks, and pushed him into the middle of the dance circle to dance with me. He turned his head, looked up at me and gave me that life altering smile, and I knew I was done for. I knew that no matter whatever happened to me for the rest of my life, the love I felt in that moment wouldn’t fade away. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to have my heart broken.
The next few times we got together Kistofo and I played soccer (he’s a world class soccer star; he scored 65 goals on me in one day), we sang songs and danced, we learned about Jonah and the Whale and David and Goliath, we played tag, and I watched him come alive as he became a part of his group of peers instead of a spectator. I watched him experience the love of the Father. I watched Kistofo see Jesus, and I could feel the love God has for him. I think it was the best 6 hours of my life.
A few days ago now, I had to say goodbye to my sweet baby boy. We played our usual games, had our fun, ran and danced and sang, but then the dreaded time came and when I bent down to look at him, Kistofo knew it too. I kissed his forehead and told him I loved him, I would miss him, and said goodbye. I thought I was fine until I saw the tear slide down his precious little face. I held his hand as my team and I walked away back toward the bus stop, but the time came when I had to let go. I had to let him go.
I know you heard that moment. I’ll never stop hearing that moment. It was an actual sound, the moment I let go.
Sometimes I wonder if my time on the Race matters. What am I even doing here? Running around the world loving people just to leave them. What’s the point in that? Isn’t that actually counter-productive? Why do the labor if you can’t see the fruit? Especially when I can see that the people I’m here to love are broken by it too. When I saw Kistofo cry because I was leaving I really questioned it. I thought, “but God, he’s broken too. How could you let him get broken too?”
But then God gave me a perspective change. The impact that God has on people through me and my team and my squad and all short term missionaries in all of the world is worth more than the pain present in the goodbyes. If people can experience the love God has for them, the living, moving, doing love, through your presence even if it’s only for a month, then that’s enough.
People search their whole lives for purpose, for a meaning to something, a reason to exist. If you’re a Christian, that’s it. Your purpose is to love in whatever capacity you can. Maybe it’s for a lifetime in an orphanage in the Philippines, or a month in a village in Zambia, or a week in a Vacation Bible School in the States, or a day at a soup kitchen, or a minute when you hold the door open for the guy behind you, or a second in a smile. Every single day of your life is filled with opportunities to live out the love of God, huge opportunities and small ones that most people overlook. All opportunities don’t look like walking a soccer ball back and forth to a boy in a wheelchair for hours so that he can play like all the other kids or buying a bag of chips for a hungry guy on the street. Some opportunities look like praying for the guy that cut you off in traffic instead of cussing him out or buying a friend coffee just because you want to hear about her life or not choking to death the man that whistles at you and says, “hey whitey, I’m looking for a wife”. Love needs no platform, no audience. Love needs no introduction or selected working space. Love is present everywhere that God is (which is everywhere). It’s only waiting to be shown. So I encourage you to choose it, to show it, to do it, to live in love because that’s our purpose. Every time you ask the question, “why,” love is in some way the answer, whether big or small. Why am I here? To love. Why did this happen to me? Because I love you, and I know what’s best for you. Why do they treat me that way? Because they don’t understand love. So hold firm to the promise our Savior placed in love, because love never fails.
