The Lollipop Parade

Yesterday, I took a bag of lollipops and went on a parade of hope and hope deferred.

GoGo greeted me with one of her perfectly sloppy kisses, a purple-dress body-roll, and a yard full of her grandchildren waving and calling my name.  The oldest boys threw their arms around me to celebrate their runaway dog’s return home, and the 5-year old jumped in the car with us to have playtime with Lifa.

Then we stopped by Ruth’s new, blue house. We sat in the yard, and talked about her dream to get a job, planning out the steps it would take for her to reach her goal. We talked about the unique qualities of her children and her family members, celebrating their special skills and counting blessings. We had the privilege of giving her little boy a new pair of tennis shoes, provided by a member of my church, and watch his face light up in hiding behind his mother’s legs.

Lizzie was in front of her brand-new house braiding hair. She chatted like we’ve known each other forever, and took us down to visit her neighbor Esther.

Last week, Lizzie delivered Esther’s baby. She didn’t know how to deliver a baby, but there just wasn’t time to get to the clinic. Esther always has her severely underdeveloped 1-year old twins wrapped around her, and is so frail that I didn’t even know she was pregnant – even when I saw her a week before she gave birth.

We found Esther in a tumbledown shack. She was happy, relieved and mortified that we were there. The1-year old twin who is able to sit up on her own was on the floor crying, covered in her own filth and in food that was probably not good for her tiny little body to ingest. Esther passed the newborn to me so she could tie the twin who cannot hold her head up onto her back.

Sweet, brand new, baby boy, Mangaliso is tiiiiny, with a head FULL of fuzzy black hair. His paper-thin skin is flaking off in the relentless winter dryness.

I was overwhelmed standing in the entrance to Esther’s house, passing the baby boy around that the women had tried to give to me on his birth day. We prayed and prayed for Esther – for safety, health, provision and for home.

We filled that one bed with babies as we passed them back to Esther, and we walked back up the mountain to Lizzie’s singing, dancing children. We filled them up with lollipops, and I guessed their flavors as I kissed them goodbye.

Later, we went to meet with some pastors who know and love their community. We were greeted first by bright-eyed, crooked-smiled, one-shoed Joshua, the son Pastor Jeffrey had been given after Joshua’s parents abandoned him at 3-weeks old, probably when they realized the left side of his body doesn’t work properly.

While Joshua, Lifa and the pastors devoured fruity lollipops, we talked about needs. We went down another side of the mountain and saw shack after shack.

One had 14 people living in two wooden rooms.

One had a family of 6 in one room.

One had a family of 11 in one room, with a baby on the way and a little girl named Promise whose dejected eyes beg to know a promise fulfilled.

There’s another family of 6 orphans in a shack in a different community we’ll meet next week.

Lifa danced around that mountain tour with us. He practiced writing his name and drew pictures on the bottom of the paper that I was scribbling names, stories and details on. On the way home he said, “Mama, can we just have some Mama-Lifa time? Can we go to a restaurant tonight?”

  

We colored by a fire while we waited for our meal. Lifa was thrilled to tell me the names of the colors, and he basked in my attention. He even snuck up to plant a kiss on my cheek while he switched from the blue to the red crayon.

If there is such a thing as a spectrum of hope, I think I saw the whole thing yesterday.

The new faces and families we met today: Malnourished, broken bodies piled high in deplorable shacks, filled mostly by their emptiness… barely clinging to the drive to survive.

And then the friends and families we’ve known and walked through life with: They are living in new houses, their shame is being replaced with freedom, and they are opening up their lives to us and to Christ.

And the little boy who is snoring in the bed next to mine: He opened the car door for me tonight when he took me on our “date”, and filled my ears with his laugher and stories about what he’s thankful for.

I’m not sure how to seal this blog up with hope. Not even with a mildly profound word. I’m not sure why I’ve been up since 2am thinking about the lollipop parade.

Passing out candy achieved only brief sugarcoated smiles and left a few more pieces of trash on the ground in South Africa today. It doesn’t build houses or build hope.

As I sit here awake at 4am thinking about all of those eyes I saw yesterday… the empty ones, the filling ones, and the sparkling ones… I can’t come to a bold and beautiful conclusion about this hope spectrum I paraded through. But I can hope that just the act of extending my full hand to those empty ones means something, starts something, changes something.

I’ve spent years extending my hand to reach for Lifa’s.

I’ve spent countless hours extending my hands to GoGo, Ruth and Lizzie’s families.

And today I reached out and gave Joshua a lollipop, and I wrapped my arms around Promise.

And, as the sun gets ready to come up, I reach out for the Son who willingly extended both of his hands on a cross to finish the spectrum of hope and fulfill a promise… for a little girl named Promise, a little boy named Joshua, and the boy whose name, Lifa, means “inheritance”.

I’m asking Him to keep reaching and keep coming, even though He came and He finished it. I’m asking Him to keep reaching for those mountain children, and to keep reaching for me and you – the ones with full hands. 

Because I think if we keep reaching, Hope can reach everyone.