March 10. 2008
Back home, sitting on the couch as if I have never left. We left Garca on Saturday morning. We traveled to Sao Paulo on the bus and then sat in the airport for seven hours. Flew 8 hours through the night to Miami, waited for another five hours and flew home. There were no tears. Not for me at least. Half way through the week I hit a wall. A very large brick wall that wouldn't allow me to stand on anything I had built.
I got knocked down in order to see the foundation that God had laid in that place before there ever was an Alpha and Omega Children's Home. I had to fall to see that. For the first few days, we just loved on the kids. We knew they had stories, everyone has a story. But we didn't know any details. We knew that life, for one reason or another, had happened to these kids which is why they were here. Tuesday night, we went out for icecream. My mind was spinning because I had become very connected to a few of the kids. I couldn't get it out of my head. And we started talking and sharing stories. Each moment proved to be more difficult to bear than the last.
A child was sold into prostitution at the age of 8. Another child was sexually abused at such a young age that it forced her to run away and sleep with men for money. Another child's mother is a prostitute, which causes this young girl to hate men and have an unhealthy obsession for women. She is 13. Another child is one of 10 kids from the same mother, but different fathers. Another child, 16 years old, has a son with his mother and has been sold as a prostitute to both men and women. Another child finds herself alone every night in a place filled with men, women and children because all she longs for is the presence of her mother.
These children have wrecked me. In the most incredible way.
I bought the book "Awareness," by Anthony DeMello before I left. And as I was reading it on the bus back to Sao Paulo, it started to stick. DeMello speaks of justice and judgement and our inability to be anything other than an ass. He says that there are two ways of responding to injustice. The first is 'reaction.' This response invokes emotion...anger, sadness, frustration, rage, etc. And now there are two issues...injustice and emotion. The second way of responding is 'action.' DeMello states, "what then, would we call the kind of passion that motivates or activates energy into doing something about objective evils? Whatever it is, it is not a reaction, it is an action." We can't allow ourselves to be burdened with emotion when we see injustice. We must act, not react. We must respond to that which does not sit well within us.
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