The Long Good-Bye

With our last full weekend in our house upon us, we are in a strange dichotomy of being emotional about saying good-bye and entirely practical about all that needs to be done before we walk away.  After a large moving sale this Saturday, we'll pack more boxes, make lists, call utility companies, and change our address for all of our mailings.  Some sweet friends are even joining me next week for a kitchen packing party.  I'll be supplying vino and sweets in exchange for their hard work.  Wink.

But today I gave myself permission to be sentimental as my kids played on their swingset for the last time.  Our fantastic neighbors will be inheriting it and will begin the process of taking it apart and moving it tomorrow.  So this afternoon Henry and Harper swang, and slid, and climbed for the final time.  Harper served her last "dinner" out of her restaurant, The Kissy Fishy, and Henry ordered his last milkshake (a pine nettle, leaf, and red clay concoction).  They have played hard and imagined well there. 

Selling a beloved home is a long good-bye.  I can't be weepy throughout the whole process.  But I am allowing myself moments to say farewell to small things knowing that the true treasures are the people who will be coming on the journey with me.

Over the years. . .

Barefoot in Honduras

Never has a Kentucky native been so proud of the stigma that all Bluegrass girls walk around without shoes.  Yes folks, I left Los Bordos barefoot on the final day of our visit.  I did it for Suyapa, a beautiful girl who needed some sturdy tennis shoes.  Her broken down sandals were filthy and her feet needed care.  So, as I returned to the van to say good-bye for the last time to these resilient, amazing residents of Los Bordos, I slipped off my shoes and socks and handed them to my friend Meg to pass to Suyapa.  And I cried.  And I told Meg that I think she's going to make it.  I think she's going to stay in school.  I think she's going to resist the culture of drugs and prostitution.  I think she's going to fall in love someday and get married.  I think she's going to get out of Los Bordos.  I think she's going to have a full life.

Giving away my shoes that day was a joy, but it wasn't a new concept.  Two other team members, Christa and Meg, also walked away from their journey to Honduras, their suitcases a little lighter.  There are tangible things that we can all do to help.  Think about some small things you can do:

• Save old shoes and socks, particularly kids sizes.  
• Don't toss the nail polish colors you don't like anymore.  The kids of Los Bordos love nothing more than a good manicure:).  
• Buy inexpensive school supplies on tax free weekend.  
• Have your kids make a slew of Rainbow Loom bracelets.  
• Collect small lotions and soaps from hotel visits.  
• Keep sticker sheets that charitable organizations send in the mail.
• Save your samples from the dentist.

Contact Sparrow Missions to find out how to send these items down with a short-term mission team (consider a donation to help with baggage expenses) or just save 'em all up and get on board for a trip to Honduras in the coming year.  You might give away your shoes.  You are sure to give away your heart.

Freedom Rings

Even in the bleakest of situations, there are glimpses of her.  In the children's cancer ward, a four year old boy named Joseph proclaims that he wants to be a doctor one day. She flashes past.  A little girl, Lesby, goes home with her parents.  We glance out of the corner of our eyes.  She stands there with us.  She is Freedom.  And on this great American holiday, we celebrate her in Honduras too.

There is Freedom in a women's sewing clinic where patterns are cut out of vibrant fabrics and women treat cotton and duck cloth as fine silk.  This is their new skill and they are meticulous in their work.  They listen intently to their teachers.  Their livelihood depends on it.  The sewing clinic brings freedom.  Freedom from going hungry.  Freedom from depending on a man who may or may not come home tonight with food and money.  Freedom from intense loneliness.  To see this sisterhood of women sewing together is to see a group of girlfriends laughing and helping each other.  Freedom rings in Los Bordos.

 There is Freedom in a men's rehab called Ministerio Vida.  The men come to get clean.  They detox right there on the property.  Cold turkey.  There is no grass in the yard; they walk it down as they pace and try to rid their bodies of the substances they used to dull the pain all these many years.  The emotion is raw, but so is the hope.  The men commit to being there for seven months.  A guitar workshop has been built in the back of the property.  There is freedom in cutting boards of Honduran mahogany and rosewood, shaping and sanding.  There is great pride in carving notches for the frets and watching a magnificent instrument come to life.  At the Ministerio Vida, Freedom's song is sung one clean life at a time. 

She is there in a school full of children.  Putting pencil to paper.  Freedom dwells in each new concept grasped, every lesson learned, granting children the gift of education.  Their ticket out of certain poverty.  That no longer has to be their fate.  The generational cycle can break here.  There is Freedom in offering a chance to change the future.  The children understand that better than we know.

On this day of independence, we celebrate from afar.  Our country is the greatest in all the world.  We know that and are proud.  But today and always, we make more of true freedom.  This is the purist form of the word.  And this freedom has the ability to dwell inside us no matter the circumstances of our lives.  No matter our country of origin.  Freedom did not limit herself.  She is available to all through Christ. 

"Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor 3:17

"For freedom Christ has set us free." Galatians 5:1

In the poem The New Colossus, Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus famously wrote,

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

 the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The bells of freedom toll loud today.

They Came Running

There is so much to say.  So much has been witnessed.  A lifetime of newscasts and clippings on world problems could not do it justice.  Those come in neat plastic rolls thrown onto my driveway for me to pick up and ingest in spurts.  I can shake my head and cluck my tongue and may even share with my husband when the news is particularly disturbing, then close the pages, smooth the lines, and walk away.  I can't do that here in Honduras.  I've seen too much. . .

 

Yesterday, we turned a corner on a back street in San Pedro Sula and I was introduced to true squalor.  Los Bordos.  A community of the shunned and forgotten.  This dirt road, lined on either side with ramshackle housing made of old wood, scrap metal, rocks, and cardboard, winds back under tall green mountains.  We don't know how far it goes.  We don't know how many people live there.  The mission teams will only go so far. 

 

Our belongings bounce and jostle over crater-like holes in the road.  There are a few curious faces peeking over tin walls.  And then they came running.  Children.  Dozens and dozens of them.  They hang on the moving vehicle and shout.  We pray quickly.  Lord, let us be your hands and feet.  And then the van door slides open and the team steps out and there are hugs.  Oh, are there hugs!

 

We go look at an improved dwelling of a woman the mission team knows well.  Her home was broken into after the death of her husband, while she and her children slept inside.  She was raped.  The missions team built a new structure for her.  She has a lock now.  Her babies feel relatively safe.  She beams with pride as she shows us around.  There is an oil painting on a wall.  Her sister and her children are visiting for a while.  They are happy to be together, but there are new mouths to feed.  The returning team members remark that the children haven't grown in the last few years.

 

This is the case for many.  A twelve year-old girl cares for her seven brothers and sisters.  She is only a little taller than my seven year-old.  She holds a sleeping baby.  A new sibling.  She has seen much.  Responsibility weighs heavily.  Her childhood is gone. 

 

Meg leads a children's discipleship class in a bright blue building.  The children listen intently and respond with energy to a story of David and Jonathan.  I paint nails for little girls.  Green with sparkles.  Their faces light up and I realize they are not so very different from my girls after all.  I paint the nails of a five year-old named Carol.  She is precious.  We begin to talk and hold hands.  I pick her up, her once floral pants faded long ago by the sun.  We stay close the rest of the afternoon.  I promise I will look for her tomorrow. 

 

Back at the mission house last night, we read Ephesians 1:5: "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.  This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."  God took great pleasure in our adoption.  We have full rights as sons and daughters.  Our inheritance is assured.  Yet, we still live at times as spiritual orphans.  Digging for scraps from yesterday's trash.  Choosing isolation because some pain is too heavy to share.  Continuing to remain in squalor because we perceive we aren't good enough for the spoils. 

 

As we encounter the true orphans this week- the teenage girls at Las Casitas (many of them with babies of their own, removed from their care), the elderly with no known family at the Asilo, the children at Los Bordos bringing up their sisters and brothers- our desire is to tell them in simple terms of this great adoption.  We want them to receive their full rights.  And we tell them that it brings their Father great pleasure to do so.