I had posted this same piece at Facebook a few weeks back when the blog was being revamped. Apologies if it’s a repeat for you. Regardless, I’ll be telling this story this morning at a church where I’ve been invited to teach. It’s an important story to me… one of many stories I will live with forever after visiting India with Compassion International.
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Suzie was painting faces along with two others. Every one of the nearly 300 children who are cared for by the Compassion Church Partner in Cuttack would spend a solid minute face to face, only inches away from their American visitors.
One of the young girls requested that, rather than having whiskers and a pink nose painted on her face, she receive a heart painted on her wrist. Suzie took the girls tiny arm in her hand and turned it over to reveal several scars on her forearm. “I fell out of a tree,” she told the translator when asked about it. But that wasn’t true. She had been cutting herself, as had several of her friends.
Where does a child get such an idea?
A few hours later, I walked with a small team to a home less than a mile from the Church, where we stood beneath a roof made of bamboo, sticks and leaves. We spoke with the family there, whose children are sponsored.
“What are your struggles as a family?” We asked their father.
“We need a roof that does not leak when it rains.”
Looking up, I could see the yellow/white glow of Cattack’s sky. Even a light rain would make its way through and make a mess of the dirt floor as well as soaking blankets and clothes. Theirs was one of several roofs like it in the neighborhood. Others were rain-protected by way of asbestos sheets linked together over bamboo, leaves and sticks. It costs roughly $200 to put an asbestos, rain-proof roof on one of these homes; a cost utterly beyond this family’s means. Their father works intermittently as an electrician and it is enough of a battle to simply keep his family fed and housed.
We turned our questions to the kids, and asked the young girl “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
She didn’t pause or blink or hesitate before she said “I am going to be a banking manager.”
She doesn’t just want to work in a bank. She wants to run the place.
I was struck by the same question I had about the girl and her friends who are cutting themselves: Where does a child get such an idea? She lives in destitute poverty as a member of a caste considered sub-human by many in her culture. She’s growing up in a society which, in large part, considers her a second class citizen because she’s not a man… and yet she speaks with complete confidence of her dream to manager a bank. How does that happen?
She got that idea from her sponsor; a 16 year old girl in Canada… whose mother manages a bank. She got that idea from the folks at the Church where she goes to school. She got that idea from loving people who have consistently cared for her and spoken words of life to her; encouraging her to dream and embrace her dreams as gifts from God.
Throughout my lifeI have been shaped by the words of those around me, for better or for worse. I have never come to a conclusion about my identity, my abilities or my future simply because it was the natural conclusion. There is no ‘neutral’ setting in the human mind and “Nature” does not assure me of my worth. Identity and confidence are principles of of faith. I may believe that I am trash or I may believe that my life is of eternal value but neither conclusion is arrived at by isolated observation of the simple facts. I believe such things about myself and do so on the authority I grant the voices of influence in my life.
Who is speaking into your heart? Who is telling you who you are and what you’re worth? Similarly, what kinds of words are you speaking into the hearts and minds of those you are granted access to?
