She called me to tell me she was hungry.
Like a child who comes home from school and says, “Mom, I’m
hungry and we don’t have anything to eat!” But not actually like that at all.
This child hasn’t had a mom – or anyone – to cry to or to be
fed by since she was 12. That’s when she found herself living alone in a shack
with her 8-year old brother. Now she’s 21 and has a child of her own.
When she calls to say she’s hungry, she’s speaking as a head
of a household with an empty stomach and a burden of responsibility.
I brought food, and we sat down on her porch to pine over
her baby’s preschool graduation photo and to talk about her empty house. I
asked her why she ran out of food this month so I could help her make plans for
next month, especially important with the brutal, beastly nature of December
around here.
Her culture’s oppressive roots teach them to survive in
dark corners behind dark stories brought on by dark skin. You’re not
supposed to ask why someone ran out of money, especially when you look like I
look and she looks like she looks. But, with counter-cultural candidness, this
hungry child-mom held nothing back.
She told me that two of her cousins had just come to live
with her and her 18-year old brother. One is 14 and in 5th grade,
the other is 19 and in 10th grade. These cousins have no parents, no
birth certificates. She’s already run around the social services circuits to
seek help, only to be repeatedly rejected. Now she has a house full of teenage
boys, and everyone in the house is a student. No income, no parents, and no
food.
Suddenly, the small bags of groceries I had carried in
seemed wildly insufficient. My heart sunk to the pit of my not-empty stomach.
Yet this hungry girl on the porch of this empty house was not despairing or
panicking. I assessed the circumstances and could only say, “I don’t know what
to say. What is God saying to you?”
Without hesitation, this little girl left alone to survive
in a grown-up world said, “They are staying with us, and God is making a big
family. We will help each other.”
Her house and her stomach are empty.
And everything in the world seems to be against her.
But she sits on that porch and does not see what she
doesn’t have.
She doesn’t see two more mouths to feed, broken systems with
no birth certificates, and no way to maintain her household.
She sees family.
She sees hope.
She looks in that empty house, and sees that it’s full.
She no longer defines herself as an orphan.
She says, “God is making a big family. We will help each
other.”
I want to be like her on this Thanksgiving Day. I want to
look in empty houses, empty hearts, and empty eyes, and to call out family and
fullness. I want to see family when I join hands over a meal, when I pass out
plates at an after-school program, when I hear their stories, and when I tell
my own. I want to be all up in that
family helping each other.
She’s right. God is making a big family.
He says to make some space because they’re coming home! More
mouths to feed and all of their broken baggage in tow. “It’s a big family. We
will help each other.”
“Enlarge the place of
your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back…”
Isaiah 54:2
We bring our empty, and He makes us full.
I run out of room in my hands and my heart, and He gives
me His.
Father, let me see full, and let me see
family.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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