Running and Shouting

This week was a big week.

This week I got a perspective check – a deeper, higher, louder, brighter, bolder, and desperate awareness of how much I need God. 

Long day in the car!

Pastor Sthembiso, Lifa and I drove an hour and a half through twisty-turny mountains to pick up Lifa’s auntie on Tuesday, and continued another hour and a half through roads lined with SNOW and ICE to go to home affairs.

It was time to handle some business.

And we’ve established enough trust and relationship with Lifa’s biological family for them to know we’re on their side – the side that chooses the highest good for them and believes they are worth being called family to us at Ten Thousand Homes and in the Kingdom of God.

Lifa and his father do not have birth certificates. It’s a huge epidemic in Africa. Identity-less people growing up uncharted in their own country.

I don’t want to demean the reality or truth in them in any way, but our “identity crises” in the States look a little different. They often come with things like changing careers, leaving or cleaving to families, or changes in economic status. Birth certificates, social security numbers and knowing your birthday… for the most part, these things are a given. And if somehow your identity documents are lost, stolen or slipped through some judicial crack, there’s a policy, procedure and something written in black and white. Talk to the right badge; find the right stamp; and wiggle into the right system.

Justice.

I don’t know the statistics of how many children and adults in South Africa are living without something that acknowledges who they are and where they came from.

How could there be a statistic for a group of invisible people?

But I do know that these people are destined for a life that repeats the same messages of not being known and not being worth it over and over again: no education, no work beyond finding manual labor, no eligibility for government assistance or acknowledgment, and children at risk of being trafficked or getting sick without even being missed.

A broken system. A perpetuating orphan crisis. Children having children with no help, no acknowledgement and no way to break the cycle.

Not my kid.

Back to the business-handling part of this story:

Back seat party! Auntie loved the toys too.

We were ready. I packed the lunches, provided the transport and was loud-mouthed American shouting for rights for Lifa. Pastor was the one with the language, the pastor badge, the big-talk, the know-how, and the people in the right places. Lifa’s auntie was the one with the DNA, the ID, and the ID and death certificate of Lifa’s paternal grandmother (1964-2007). We had a plan of action and were ready to go apply for the birth certificate with high hopes and big faith.

Operation: Shout fror Justice was quickly (and temporarily) silenced an hour into home affairs with Pastor’s overwhelmed face, genuine sorrow, and the words, “It’s not going to happen.”

This is when the perspective checking started. In this desperate moment where, with each new piece of information that came in, the gap for justice widened.

I’m speaking on fathers this Sunday in my church.

And this week I learned that, as much as we want fathers to rise up to take responsibility for families and children in this country, it’s not just counter-cultural, but their rights are totally written out of the law. A father cannot register his child for a birth certificate. It has to be a mother or the mother’s mother.

And if you come to the place that we are suddenly finding ourselves in, when there’s no identity documents for either parent and no living grandmothers, shoulders get shrugged, exhales get louder and it suddenly becomes a, “We don’t know what to do.”

Where’s the policy? Where’s the procedure? Where’s the stamp? Where’s the badge?

I came here to be God’s hands and feet in the orphan crisis.

Now the orphan crisis is living in my house.

And he calls me Mama.

Photo by Clark Grigg

Lifa was set up to fall right into place in this perpetuating orphan crisis – to never have an id, never have the right to dream, and to have a long and hard road to find his place in the Family of God. Maybe even to continue the cycle. If it’s all you know, what else can you do?

Not anymore.

Lifa is not an orphan.

Lifa has a mama.

Lifa has a father who loves him dearly – enough to want the best life for him. He’s heroically taking a chance with some emotional white girl to break a cycle, to choose family, and to end the orphan crisis in his own family.

Photo by Clark Grigg

Two years ago Lifa was invisible.

Today you can’t miss him. He’s like a lip magnet!

Transformed from “the least of these” to “God’s Greatness”.

The way we love each other is teaching us and everyone around us family.

A former orphan is teaching others about the Family of God.

And living, loving and worshipping from his place in the Family.

This week changed me.

Where I was once timid, nervous and taken back by the great promise God has put on Lifa and I, I’m now proud to hold on to them, speak them out and run after them.

Lifa’s been teaching me allllll about temper tantrums.

I think I’m learning well.

I’m joining in the running and shouting.

I’m shouting out for justice and family.

My heart is desperately crying out for what I believe God is calling us to.

And I’m running after Him. And what He says. And how He says to do it.

“We don’t know what to do,” isn’t stopping us in our tracks.

It’s just turning us onto uncharted territory – giving us more space to run.

And we’re going to run hard. And shout loud.

And this “we don’t know what to do” place we’re in is going to give God glory such a beautiful stage.

Pastor, Lifa and I are going to social services tomorrow to ask where to start.

Stand with us.

Run with us.

Shout with us.

There’s a little boy and his entire biological family God is calling Home.

There’s a family living in a little cottage God is calling His.

There’s a nation full of voices to join in a battle cry for family and for justice.