A Ninja in the Hallway

A 5-year old cart-wheeling, prank-pulling, heart-stealing ninja-boy just closed his sparkly eyes to pray, gave me a kiss, and fell asleep on my chest.

This afternoon, he stomped out a new shopping cart song with every new aisle in the grocery store. The cilantro spilled everywhere, and the paper napkins went flying as he sang his own lyrics: “Jesus is my family. I love you Jesus.”

He calls me Mama.

More than two years ago, I heard God speak.

He said, “You will adopt Lifa. He is your son.”

Before the grocery store, Lifa and I sat in the hallway of a hospital, passing out chocolate chip cookies. Three-year old Given has been there since before Christmas due to extensive burns.

I watched Given’s siblings and cousin watch Given. They were together for the first time in months because we got special permission. I watched the shock, the toll of separation, and felt every heart strain as twins, Kevin and Given, were afraid to look at each other.

While I watched this family stumble to love, the nurses asked me to take one of the other children home for the weekend. “He’s so lonely. And he’s so naughty. Maybe you can talk to the manager.” Elton came to the hospital months and months ago for injuries related to abuse. Now he just lives there because it’s not safe to go home. He doesn’t even have his own bed or anything that’s his. He just lives in a hospital. He’s five.

While Given shied away from his own family…

While Elton clamored for my attention and more cookies…

While Lifa made really uncomfortable and uncanny observations a little too loudly…

While Chantelle, with the oozing, reeking bandages hid quietly beside me…

While we still sat on the floor in the hallway of a hospital…

Given’s cousin, Thami, curled up against me and said, only loud enough for me to hear, that he wanted to live with his sister, Nandi, in foster care. He didn’t want to live with his mom anymore. He was scared to go home. He’s six, and he asked to go to foster care.

I’ve read the red-letter words of Jesus.

He said, “I come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

All of this was today.

And I know it’s all out of order, and it probably doesn’t make much sense.

Welcome to the inside of my head and my heart. Everything scrambled. Especially the words in red.

Adopt Lifa.

God said those words.

Abundant Life.

Jesus died for those words.

So what is this?

Since the time God spoke about Lifa, that perfect little man-child has most-definitely become my son. But literal, legal, physical adoption, as adoption is defined by this world, seems further and further away. Have I gotten it all wrong?

And where exactly is the abundance in stranger twins, giveaway kids, and secret pleads for foster care? Families who are scared to be family, kids who don’t have a family anymore, and kids who would rather live in someone else’s family just to be safe? Is this what You died for? Was the cross worth it for this?

My heart got shook up, and I felt something heavy and dark in that hospital hallway today.

And on this day many years ago, the earth shook and the sky went dark.

I can’t imagine the disappointment when the guy who called Himself “king”, the One who said He was there to fulfill all the super-hero messianic prophesies and overcome it all, died the most mortifying death. The words the people read didn’t look like what they thought it would when it played out before them.

What was supposed to be “adoption” and “abundance” looked like a torn piece of cloth, a dead carpenter, and shaking darkness.

For three days.

And on the third day, I don’t think it looks like what we thought it would either.

Which means maybe we need to adjust our vision and our definitions.

Because it’s here.

Lifa now has a mom and a dad. In a really unconventional sort of way.

His father re-entered his life two years ago, wants to learn family, and wants me to be a part of Lifa’s life.

Lifa’s grocery cart song was, “Jesus is my family.”

Lifa sings adoption’s song.

And I release and remember: Jesus laid down his life, hoping that I would sing about His family with cilantro, and longing for me to fall asleep on His chest. When He said I was adopted, when He called me family, it never had to do with whose house I’d live in, what school I’d go to, or what language I speak to Him in.

In hospital hallways, I hear pitter-pattering feet and giggles spewing, “Mama Kacy! Mama Kacy!” before I even set foot in the children’s ward. Oozing bandages and all, Chantelle hides under a bed to surprise me, and then I twirl her down the entire length of the ward. Twins don’t know what to do, but at least they know the other one is ok.

And I cling to hallway hope: Maybe I’ve been understanding adoption and measuring abundance wrong all along. Abundance has nothing to do with how many cookies or even how many parents you have in those hallways.  

Abundance is still squealing, still giggling and still twirling when you haven’t seen anything but fluorescent lighting in 6 months… because Abundant’s light is brighter and is burning in you.

It’s Easter y’all.

He rose, and He is shining in a ninja-boy’s eyes and singing in hospital pitter-patters.

There is darkness in his story and pain in those hallways.

Just like my story and my hallways.

But adoption and abundance are louder and more beautiful… and live forever.

 And I’d rather be in the cheering section of eternity’s empty tomb than the jeering section of today’s demanding murder tool.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

The girl who learned how to twirl

There was once a little girl who didn’t want anything to break. So she worked very, very hard. She wanted everyone to smile.

The girl who didn’t want anything to break learned how to fix things before they broke and how to keep a smile on her face. But when she wasn’t busy fixing things or making smiles, the little girl put on her beautiful twirl dress. And she twirled. She twirled and she twirled.

….

There was once another little girl. This little girl was born into everything already being broken. And no matter how hard she worked, no one would smile at her.

The girl who never saw smiles just couldn’t fix it. So she ran away. But everything was broken there too, and, still, nobody smiled. She had never seen or heard of a twirl. Nothing was beautiful.

….

The girl who didn’t want anything to break grew up. And found out she was broken. She found out that she couldn’t fix it all, and sometimes making everybody smile wasn’t the best thing.

She still loved to twirl, even though she didn’t have a twirl dress anymore. There was something about it. Something that made her beautiful.

…

The girl who never saw smiles grew up too fast. She saw many other things that little girls shouldn’t see. So she wiped away her expressions, and she did whatever she had to do.

She couldn’t afford to love anything. She couldn’t risk feeling.

…

The girl who didn’t want anything to break…

The girl that was broken… found Beautiful. And He promised to un-break things and twirl her into Forever and Ever without letting go.

So she decided to twirl with Beautiful. 

Even though she still worries on some days about everybody else’s smiles.

The girl that found Beautiful decided to never let go of Him, and to go wherever He said to go.

…

The girl that found Beautiful found the girl who never saw smiles, doubled over in brokenness and shame. The girl who never saw smiles couldn’t look the girl that found Beautiful in the eyes, so she just walked behind her.

The girl who never saw smiles had run away again. She was given a new home full of smiles, and she felt guilty. So she left. And ran back into broken.

The girl that found Beautiful remembered when she had realized she was broken. And she was still realizing it on that day. And today.

She also remembered what Beautiful did, and what He does, when everything is broken.

The girl that found Beautiful taught the girl who didn’t see smiles how to twirl.

And she melted.

And she smiled.

And her face filled with light.

And she laughed.

The girl who learned how to twirl was free for those few moments. Her smile was from the inside, and nothing was broken.

The girl who learned how to twirl held on with her whole fist to a hand that was bigger than hers. She learned to trust that hand to lead her in a procession of her own beauty, and even to lean back into a leg-kicking dip.

For at least a moment, the girl who learned how to twirl encountered Beautiful. 

Just an afternoon...

It started one year ago with a whisper in my spirit, a pot of beans and rice, and an overloaded Mazda. And it just keeps getting better.

I look forward to Sunday Lunch every week. The people I call family pile in; we play the Thankful Game; and we go to church together. Then we all come back to my place and share a picnic meal together.

We've experienced popsicles and mastered the slip-and-slide. We've made mistakes, and learned how to extend healthy discipline. We’ve walked through tragedies, and celebrated milestones. We all have a role, all have a job, but, most importantly, we all have a place on the picnic blanket – and we won’t start eating until everybody’s there.

It’s just an afternoon…

But it’s changed me.

And it’s changed Family.

Mamas play with babies.

Children feel valuable.

Starving bodies metabolize nutrients.

Empty eyes dance with joy.

The ungrounded grow roots.

The invisible develop attachments.

The orphaned pray to the Father.

The vulnerable unify around a blanket and break bread.

All from just an afternoon.

This week, I was blown away by the realization that we’ve shared a year of Sunday lunches. I watched God’s handiwork giggle, glow and slide. His dreams dancing with mine… in real life, right before my undeserving eyes.

I felt His whisper again.

“There’s more.”

It’s not finished yet, this glorious work He lets me cook for.

So, I’m telling Him I believe Him by posting a gaggle of photos – yes, a gaggle.

Thank You photos. Testimony photos. And We Believe There’s More photos.

The back seat view of the Condor... 15 people in the 7-seater car this week.

Front seat with Candis

He hasn’t brought us this far for nothing, friend.

There have been hundreds of hours of dirty work, some really gross moments before those bodies learned how to keep the nutrients in, and days we had to learn discipline before delight. Even now, I feel maxed out – with no more space in the car, no fenced in backyard, and not enough cups and bowls.

But He just has to lean in and whisper, “There’s more.” Our God with higher ways and greater love is molding Sunday Lunch to look more like His Church and His Kingdom…

When He whispers it, it’s never just an afternoon. No matter how many hours, how many afternoons, how many years it takes… No matter how many pots of beans or whatever it is He’s whispered to you about… There’s more.

Hallelujah's View

I have fallen in love with armfuls and lapfuls of swollen-faced, bandaged-limbed, burned-skinned, disfigured-bodied, and completely perfect children. Some days my heart lunges and some days it leaps, but I love walking through the double doors of the children’s ward.

It started two days before Christmas when disaster struck sweet little Given. I couldn’t keep myself away from Given, who’s still there almost three months later. But now, there are so many more.

Kids who live there because of medical abandonment.

Kids who bear the breaks and bruises of abuse.

Kids who were born into a broken world with very broken bodies.

Kids who still smile and kids who just cry.

So I keep going. And I bring extra arms.

Guests to TTH are welcome to walk those halls with me, in small groups, to spread joy and carry the burdens of brokenness by holding one broken body at a time.

Yesterday, as I pulled up the steep driveway to Themba Hospital, I started wondering why…

Why do I keep going?

Why do I keep holding them, knowing they’ll cry again when I have to go?

Why do I bring visitors who are only passing through?

Is it fair?

Is it meaningful?

Do the moments we spend there have any weight on the scales of eternity?

I couldn’t stop wondering. But I couldn’t turn back.

We hugged; we kissed; we held; we ate sweeties; and then we began to say our goodbyes. As I walked by the very last children’s room before exiting the ward, I heard her screaming. And I saw that face. And a very young, flustered mother trying to peel her wailing daughter off of her skirt.

The mother looked at me in distress saying, “I have to go. She wants to go home.”

My mind was turning, my brain scrambling.

Because I knew this child.

And I had already loved her for so long.

But something was out of place.

Her mother told me she had fallen on her head and they were watching for brain swelling. She’d only been there one day.

But I knew her. And loved her.

And I knew her name meant, “Beloved.”

The little girl I as thinking of was not a girl I knew from hospital visits though. She is from our feeding in Clau-Clau.

I asked her mother her name. “Notando”. “Beloved”.

It was her. The same girl I loved in a place I didn’t expect.

Notando, Jan 2012 - Photo by Carly B

 I scooped up the screaming, kicking 4 or 5-year old who was still grasping for her mother. I told her, “I know this child, and I love her. You can go, and I will hold her.”

Her mother left with relief sweeping over her, and Notando had a meltdown.

As she choked on her tears, I sat on her bed and cradled her. I sang the same lines over and over again: “We will sing out hallelujah; we will cry out hallelujah.”

She kept crying. The children gathered around me and the new girl.

“We will sing out hallelujah; we will cry out hallelujah.”

She still cried, but over the sound of her cries, I heard a new sound. A small choir made of broken-armed boys joined in the song. I rocked while they leaned in.

“We will sing out hallelujah; we will cry out hallelujah.”

November 2012

I was blown away by the holiness of that moment. A broken-armed choir singing over a scared and lonely Beloved.

She was so tired, but too scared to sleep. So I lay down in her bed with her, with her sobbing, soggy body wrapped around mine. I kept singing, and she kept crying until she fell asleep.

“We will sing out hallelujah; we will cry out hallelujah.”

I looked as I sang.

The view from that bed…

Notando’s view… and Given’s, Chantelle’s, Elton’s, Lucy’s, Pearl’s, George’s, Themba’s, Noktulo’s, and all the others’…

I sang up at white, paneled ceilings and fluorescent lights. And I wonder if the words bounced off.

I sang through steel bars toward a sick, sleeping boy. And wondered if the words could reach.

I sang on top of a plastic-covered mattress with white and blue-stamped sheets, bearing the name that sometimes seemed like the ultimate contradiction: Themba Hospital. Hope Hospital. And I wondered if the words could give rest here.

I thought about the hallelujah I was singing for – the one with a completely different view. When fluorescent lights are replaced with the Radiant Glory of God; when we don’t even need a sun. And when we look through perfected eyes at beauty that the most precious jewels can’t compare to. And when we are dressed in fine, white linens- garments of praise and salvation.

I can’t reconcile the contrast of the hallelujah I was singing for and the place I was singing it in. But I felt the weight of His perfect sovereignty, more tightly than I felt the sniffling, sleeping body wrapped around me.

I came that day wondering why.

His little, hurting Beloved needed to be cradled and sang over. She wanted to go home, and she needed Home’s song to be washed over her environment that didn’t match.

Feb 2013

Just like me.

When robed in itchy garments of pain, when the tears are flowing, when people leave, when circumstances glare like fluorescent lights, the Hallelujah comes and cradles His Beloved.

I’ll never be able to grasp how or why so many children fill so many hospital beds. A hospital will never look like the hallelujah we were singing for. But, sovereignty wrapped around me and sang hallelujah in that hospital bed. And I’ll keep going until the Sovereign Hallelujah says stop.   

Talking to rocks

I’ve been blog-blocked.

And when I’m blog-blocked, I’m almost always heart-blocked.

I have heard God speak to me many times before.

And sometimes, in the middle of all that glory, I still hear the things He didn’t say louder than what He did.

When the King of Kings says, “JUMP,” I want my response to be, “How high are You taking me?”

But sometimes it’s, “Where will I land?”

He says to be mama to a little boy - to love him with all of me.

But he hasn’t said anything about the stifling corruption or why it’s so difficult to get a birth certificate. Or about the father that has come back into his life– or how to be mama to a long-distance little boy who suddenly has two families.

He says to build a house with extra rooms. That He’ll fill it and He’ll make it a place for Family.

But he hasn’t me given blueprints, the materials to use, or even a desire to learn the ins and outs of house-building in Africa. He hasn’t told me how He’ll fill the house.

Instead of living under a cloud of glory, I’ve been drenched in a downpour of doubt. His word is complete before He even speaks it, but even God uses the spacebar, an occasional ellipsis, and periods. There’s just no hurry when you are outside of time and space.

But that holy gap that has held me hostage in my own humanity.

Moses physically watched God punctuate the journey to the Promised Land with a cloud by day and a pillar of smoke by night. When it moved, they moved. When it stopped, the stopped. Easy as that, right?

Some things never change.

Humanity stomps.

Thousands of Israelites in the desert filled in the unknowns by melting their own jewelry into a cow-god, throwing carnivorous temper tantrums for a piece of steak, and using all the voice they had left to threaten their leader for a water fountain.

I do it.

Sometimes in more holy-looking ways. And sometimes in less.

I can melt my words into a tear-jerking blog, throw a righteous temper-tantrum for what breaks my own heart, and use all the voice I have to tell God what I want.

Moses got to talk to God face-to-face, like a friend. And Moses still got worn out in the in-betweens. When that Wind blows over you and Holiness sweeps you off your feet, anywhere you land – in the heart of South Africa’s orphan crisis or on Mt. Sinai with a wandering group of former slaves - seems like too much to bear.

I read today in Exodus about the thirsty cry of his people, groaning for water in the middle of a desert. God pulled Moses aside and told him the way the Almighty Provider would pour out His glory and make water spring from a rock. All Moses had to do was speak to the rock and hit it with his staff.

Moses walked out with his big stick, spoke to the people, and basked in the glory as the water flowed and the people drank. And that one moment, when Moses spoke to the people instead of the place God directed it, was enough to keep him out of the Promised Land.

I want the promises.

I don’t meet with God face to face, but spirit to spirit. And He gives words.

I get scared in the in-betweens… the waiting days and the wandering days.

My greatest fear is that I heard Him wrong, that I’m just getting swept up in holy romanticism.

I fill in details to answer your questions and mine.

I speak to the people instead of The Rock.

Forgive me Father, for being afraid.

Forgive me for chasing after the details, and for quenching myself in the glory-like emotion of being known. You tell me to build a house named Glory House. Let not one stone be laid if I receive any glory from it. I would rather walk circles around a desert for a lifetime than taste one drop of glory meant for my Father. The Promised Land is not a place human hands can build or blueprint, but a place where I’m going. You are my Rock. You carry me in the holy in-betweens, and you catch me when I stumble in confusion or drift the wrong way. Let me hear, look to, and speak to Your voice for the rest of my days. Amen.

I love you, dear friend reading this blog.

And I need you to know that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Or how to do it.

Sometimes I cry about it. Sometimes I cringe.

Sometimes I say words that are not appropriate to put on this blog.

Some days I don’t even know how to pray, and some days I feel too far away to.

But every day I’m thankful that you read. And that you pray.

And every day God comes and He catches.

So I’m recommitting to you today to take the big stick He’s given me and to speak to the Rock. Let all the glory that the people will drink up will come from the Rock and not from me.