I look at them as they sit in a row watching cartoons. One
who landed here some seven years ago knocking on death’s door, one whose body
is ravaged with cancer and the other who is only just crawling out of the vice
grip of four years of starvation. They inspire me these boys. The first I met
at age two, he had been nursed back to health by the loving family that took
him in, but still showed telltale signs of abandonment. I remember the first
time he wrapped his chubby arms around my neck and how his adoptive parents
told me I was the first white person besides them that he wasn’t afraid of. Earlier
this year he walked down the aisle of our wedding as a sure and confident ring
bearer. His is a story of redemption.
The other I met a few short months ago abandoned by his
mother because she couldn’t afford the treatment he needed and didn’t want to
see him die from the cancer that ravaged his body. He became fluent in English
in a couple short months and I came to fall in love with his sense of humour. I
sit back and wonder how a boy that was left to die, a boy who has not even seen
a decade on this earth and whose body is ravaged by cancer can somehow be that witty. My heart wells up as I think that
I don’t want to say goodbye to this precious one anytime soon. I want to hear
his jokes and see him play for many years to come. I somehow wonder how his
story would be different if he had been born somewhere else. Into a family that
was able to get him treatment sooner, into a country that had the technology he
needs. And somehow I am reminded not to focus on what might have been but to
find joy in the now. In the laughter as they watch cartoons and in the joy of
riding to church with Uncle Paul and Auntie Jaimee as if riding in our car
instead of their regular car is some kind of grand privilege.
The third one I have only just met. His body and his brain
ravaged by starvation, he is now receiving loving care. He has started to blossom
and it brings me joy. Nobody knows if or how much ability he will regain after
so many years of neglect, but I see joy in the faces of those who have come to
love him at each new milestone.
I sit back and I praise Him. I praise Him for writing me into
the pages of their story, even if only in a very minor way. I feel as though I
somehow bear witness to some kind of sacred miracle as I watch these and so
many others. And somehow God uses these three to remind me of His redeeming
love. As I sometimes struggle through my days in this foreign land, I expend my
energy surviving an unfamiliar culture and I can become numb to the people
around me. But this Father of mine, He has this way of showing me Himself in so
many unexpected ways. In boys watching cartoons and in the ways each of them
has been redeemed. He writes their stories even as I don’t know how they will
end. He reminds me He is good, forever and always.
