My thoughts. The kind that keep you from sleeping.

"How could I ever leave?" 


This was the thought as I closed the 3rd of 3 locks on my front gate. The thought was in reference to my girls. I was just able to coach little bitty girls - as young as 5 and 6, all the way to girls at 14 that had never played soccer before. Last night I was also blessed to spend time at the rehabilitation home with these amazing girls and young women God had sought out and rescued by name and by individual story. At the moment, I'm past the 2 year mark of my 2 year commitment, but I had already decided, "Well, what's the rush? I'll get home eventually." So, yesterday, I asked friends to not ask me for favors (I don't do well at saying, "No.") so I could make the relatively short moto drive out to my girls. I hadn't been there in weeks. Life had gotten me busy. Yes, I admit, I let life busy me to the point of not putting these amazing girls first. I pull up and girls don't know what to think. The first of many come to me, she grabs my hand, and asks, "why are you here?" I tell her I've come to sit... to sit and talk. Girls come around corners, and out of classrooms, and we sit on the stairs and do just that. One of the smallest girls, we call her the "toothless wonder," eyes an orange Sharpie in my bag. A few minutes later I have an attempt at a heart colored onto my arm. One of the other girls (she's a bit older - I think she should be 16 by now; I've known her for two years) sits in real close, holds my hand and tells me she loves me. This one started talking about the coming months when I will go home, and stopped talking. They don't like to let the other girls see them cry. She and I have already shed many tears over this day in the future that, before, has seemed so far away. Another girl, one of the "toughest" of the bunch - one that has cut her hair short, and responds in the masculine form of their language - she ran right in front of me. She reached to me asking if I was mad at her... mad at them. 

This is their thought. I haven't been around for busyness' sake and they perceive they've disappointed, or angered at me. What lies of the Enemy, and what fragile hearts God has given me to hold. 

I assure her that isn't the case at all. Thankfully they love me enough to take my words and apology and believe. I'm a sinner saved by grace, and every single time I disappoint those girls I feel it more and more. 

Today, I returned. Two days in a row is something to stir their faith, right? They jump and yell to each other that I've come. Girls on a cement court, girls on the 2nd floor of their home, they yell of my arrival.

 

"How could I ever leave?" (nagging, relentless thoughts)

I get off my moto, and, as I stand, one of the girls see I've come dressed as a coach. "PRACTICE!!! SOCCER PRACTICE!!" She yells. This little girl - she's a comedian. She's always loud, and always simultaneously loving. She wears her emotions with every part of her being. Today I've come to start a team of the little girls - Under 12 to be exact. Cambodian children at eighteen are often the size of an American thirteen year old. That being said, these little girls - at ten years of age - are about the size of five and seven year old children I know back home. The ball comes to their knee cap, and they still attempt to kick with all their might. 

There isn't much "might" in them. They're in this home because they've been taken, or beaten, or broken, or violated, and every one of them is hurt. Their bodies are typically not that strong, but, if they've made it here, then their resilience is stronger. The thing is, oftentimes their hearts are broken, and then shut into the confines of an impenetrable shield in the process. Well, they have lived in that shield long enough, and now is a season of restoration. I get to watch them laugh, and push, and fall, and get back up again as they play like children - the age they are, ignoring their life experience that is far beyond their birth date. 

"How could I leave?" 

Then I think about inner city children in the ghettos of America. I think specifically of the children in Southern cities that are still walking in the lies of slavery. They're still enslaved even though the fight for civil rights is said to have ended so long ago. They do not believe in the freedom our Bill of Rights claims to have given them, and survival in America depends on you believing in and fighting for that which you desire to be  yours. Too many times, though, these children of the slums of America do not believe it is possible to fight for a better life until their better conscience is battered into believing the lie of fighting for it through the mode of violence and drugs. Violence will let you take what you want. Drugs help you to avoid the life that you don't want. I have, for years, wanted to fight for these children to know they can hope for more. 

Now I'm here. Now I have the stories, and the faces, and have received the hugs of girls that once felt that they had no hope but to sell their bodies and their childhoods to - not even the highest bidder, but anyone who would stake a wager... oftentimes for pennies on the dollar. I, too, have the face of a middle school age black boy that has already begun breaking the law - not knowing another way - and will go home at the end of a school day to care for the five younger siblings left under his "watchful" eye. 

Where is the connection, and how am I to understand these two breakings in my heart? 

The thought as I got ready for bed - I am an abolitionist. That's why I find myself, and take my guests to stand in front of the National Civil Rights Museum. That's why I love the movies set in the time periods of the Civil War, or Jim Crow Laws, or even Women's Suffrage of 1920. I always wonder at whether I would've been the kind of person who would have sat alongside Rosa Parks as she did not move from her seat. Would I have held a candle, and a hand out, to guide people along the Underground Railroad? The thought that always manages to follow these - I do live in a time of slavery. I live during a historical time of injustice.

Where will I stand now?

I want to abolish the slavery in the hearts of inner city children, and I want to break the chains that once held my girls captive.   

Source: http://rachelsumner.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-thoughts-kind-that-keep-you-from.html