Megan Kennedy, of July 2013’s Q Squad, thought that kids around the world all were the same. They played games together, giggled at inside jokes, and enjoyed a beautiful childhood. When she got to Cambodia, she realized that not every child’s story was the same after all. In fact, some children’s stories were really, really ugly.
From the moment we stepped off the tuk-tuk they wouldn’t leave us alone. Kids everywhere. Not to play, but to sell. Aggressively. This time it was bracelets.
I hadn’t seen sellers so aggressive since navigating the markets in the heart of Nairobi, Kenya. And these were children. For fifteen minutes my team walked down a night street in Phnom Penh, searching for a place to eat. And not for one second did these children leave our sides.
The first few times they asked if we wanted to buy their bracelets, I found it endearing. They looked up at me, raising a hanger full of colored strings and with wide eyes asked, “Three for one dollar!” But after about the tenth time saying no, I became agitated. As did the children. They became more aggressive.
“Why don’t you want our bracelets? BUY. You NEED a bracelet.”
When I went to turn down the street, one stuck their hand out and wouldn’t let me walk, trying to direct me back towards another child selling bracelets. At one point, I heard a teammate call out and turning around saw that she was surrounded by four children and a mother with a naked child, all with their hands out, asking for money.
When we finally arrived at our restaurant for dinner, I sat down and didn’t say much for twenty minutes. I was frustrated and overwhelmed. I wanted to love those children more than anything. Yet it was hard. It was really, really difficult.
I spent dinner lost in my own thoughts, attempting to process what just happened. As I processed, I stole glances outside, noting that the children were still there, waiting for us to finish dinner.
Why did the situation affect me so much? What would I do if the same thing were to happen again?
But my thoughts were interrupted immediately after dinner. As we left the restaurant, a member of my team asked a man nearby where the children came from. Where were their parents?
“They don’t have parents,” he told us. Pointing down the street the man continued, “They all live in an orphanage. That man down there, he runs them. They work for him.”
My heart immediately softened. My view of the children changed in an instant. They went from overly aggressive street vendors to kids who just wanted love.
There’s something wrong with this picture. It shouldn’t take hearing someone’s story to be able to love them.
It shouldn’t require understanding the workings of each person and what makes them who they are to show grace.
The reality is, we are all people with stories. Each and every one of us has a beautiful, handwritten story designed by the maker of the entire universe, but too often we fail to remember this. We’re quick to see others as impeding on our schedules, our lives, and our time.
As I begin this month in Cambodia, it’s quite possibly more important than ever that I’m humbled daily and reminded that we are all God’s people and all have our own stories. In a nation that is still recovering from genocide, where eighty of the population is under 30 and only three percent is older than 65 due to the mass killings, everyone has a story of how their family was affected.
I don’t need to know who someone is to love them. I don’t need to hear why someone is the way they are to extend grace. We have been made to love and that’s what I want to do.
My prayer is that we can begin to see people through the eyes of God. That we begin to see people as more than just faces but as individuals with beautifully unique stories waiting to be told and as people waiting to love and to be loved.
At Adventures in Missions, we place a high value on storytelling. We believe that everyone has a story to tell. We’ve curated a collection of our favorites – in the form of videos, photographs, and blogs – and now it’s up to you to decide which ones are the very best. We’ll be opening voting in the next few days, so stay tuned to this blog and make sure to like us on Facebook so you’ll know when it’s time to vote!
