Uplifters

I'm having one of those down days. Maybe you know the one - kind of headachy and run down, nothing seriously major enough to warrant the weepy breakdown this morning all day long, but a lot of little things from a lot of different areas in life all circling like vultures.

I needed a good cry, I surely did. Ad Vingerhoets, a leading expert on crying (yes, there is such a thing), notes that "situations that induce crying are always related to loss or separation." Today happens to be the birthday of my longtime boss and mentor, Gary Rowe. Even after I moved several times and changed jobs several times he was my go-to guy, one of the few people I could call when work in the counseling world felt too heavy. By nature counseling is a private profession; we tend to hold others' hurts silent and close to our hearts, but he was my load sharer. He had a wit and wisdom that put my role in even the most difficult of situations into a hopeful perspective. Gary passed away six months before we got Paul (oh, he would have loved Paul!) after a six year battle with cancer.

I'm really pissed at cancer.

I suppose my crying jag is fitting because I cried a lot with Gary. In retrospect, that probably wasn't very professional of me. This was my first grownup job. He was my boss. But he was the kind of person who made it okay, who helped you through the cry and out the other side a better counselor and a better person.

One thing about Gary - he really enjoyed life. He savored it. I grew up with the impression that Christians ought turn up their noses at the pleasures of this world - in the world but not of it, that sort of thing - but Gary held the opposite stance. He figured that Jesus got accused of being a glutton and a drunk, and so he should walk VERY closely in His footsteps. He was that kind of fun.

He nurtured and maintained my addiction to very good, very expensive coffee. So today I drank one two three cups of Joybean Coffee in his honor. (Because really, where's the fun in moderation?) Sam brought me a bag of Joybean Coffee from her mission trip to Nicaragua, JUST after my Lenten coffee fast. (I have since purchased three more bags.) Everything about this coffee makes me smile - high-altitude Arabica coffee grown organically, bought at fair- and living-wage prices, roasted and sold to benefit the children at Metanoia Children's Home in Nicaragua. It's uplifting, just like Gary.

Is It Still Dark at MIS?

Paul loves to know what time it is at MIS, the care center where he used to live. The six hour time diffence is both puzzling and fascinating. (To me, also.) Yesterday afternoon we were driving from school to the offices of Kentucky Refugee Ministry. (That detail seemed relevant to me at the time. Maybe it is. I'm not sure.) "Is it dark at MIS?" Paul asked.

I looked at the clock. 3:45 pm Kentucky time = 9:45 pm Lesotho time. "Yeah, buddy, it's dark in Lesotho. The kids are probably all sleeping."

"Not the big kids," Paul said. "They's having a campfire for a little bit."

I stayed quiet, although I was curious. A campfire? Sometimes, if I don't press, these remembrances continue. And sometimes, not always, I can ferret out true happenings in his past from fantasy wish fulfillment. He didn't elaborate, though, but continued to draw in his journal.

"Will all the kids get 'dopted?" he asked after a few minutes.

Interestingly, we had just gotten an email from a friend in Lesotho updating the lastest match meeting. Eleven children (out of approximately 200,000 orphans in the entire country) were matched. Which is wonderful, yes, but fewer than the possible 16 allowed per match meeting. (Four children per adopting country.) "Well, we can pray that all the kids will be adopted into a family that loves them," I said.

"But will they?" (He's my realist.)

"Probably not," I answered truthfully.

"Will the big kids get 'dopted?" he asked.

"I don't know, buddy." By now my eyes are prickling and I'm trying not to cry. The faces of two particular big kids are etched in my mind. One, a boy with a soccer ball tucked under his arm and a megawatt smile, is Paul's abuti, the brother figure who looked out for him at the care center. Another, a tall, thin girl with shy eyes is Paul's best friend's sister. As David Platt said, "Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names."

"What they gonna do with no famb'ly?"

"I don't know." I thought of the street kids we'd met in Lesotho. What are they gonna do?

"Some kids won't get 'dopted," he said. "Retsedesie died. Why?"

Now I'm crying and I'm realizing in just a few minutes I have to convince the KRM youth director that Sam and I are emotionally stable enough to tutor refugee children, who are also from hard places. "He got really sick, buddy. But he was with M'e Mamonyane and Miss Nancy and his sister and KB, and they all really loved him."

"At MIS, if a kid got a big hurt, he just laid down. Sometimes a M'e helped, but sometimes they's busy. We didn't have a doctor. Some kids went to hospital, but then they stayed there."

Sometimes the world is a terrible place. "It's really hard, isn't it?"

He was quiet for a minute. "Is it still dark at MIS?"

"Yeah, buddy. It's still dark."

P.S - If you feel called to support children from hard places, many of whom won't get 'dopted, I encourage you to visit Ministry of Hope, working in Malawi and Lesotho to provide feeding centers, educational scholarships, and support for single mothers. Or check out Orphan Care Alliance and their work with vulnerable children in Louisville and around the world.

P.P.S - MIS, the care center where Paul lived, was shut down in March. Many of those children went to Beautiful Gate, Ministry of Hope and other locations (including the street) throughout the country.