Blueberry Muffins and Spaceship Pj's

We have decided to sponsor a child through Compassion International. (Yay! look at me! I posted a link!) I researched a lot of different organizations and for various reasons decided to go through Compassion. However, that’s not the point of this writing. If you want to know more please just ask me and I’ll probably tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

I don’t write about this so that you will think I am super spiritual and out there saving the lost. I’m doing a bible study (Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker) and someday, if I ever meet her, I am going to thank her for ruining my life. We had decided to sponsor a child before I started the bible study, and I will admit that I may have patted myself on the back a little for being so helpful. But then I started reading Jen’s book, and I realized there is so much more I can do at home. She is shedding light on my soul in areas I didn’t know existed, and it’s not pretty. I have never felt this uncomfortable about whether or not I am helping the world, if I am doing my part. I realize now that sponsoring Hendrick should just be the start of my journey. All that is a post for another day, today is about how if you’re looking for a way to make a difference, sponsoring a child is a good way to start.

I have always had a heart for saving the lost. Birds, cats, dogs, boyfriends, etc. Perhaps in my youth that desire was a little misguided (really, Rachel, you do not have to date them in order to help them find the right path), but regardless the desire to help and save has always been there. As a grownup I know that people are not mine to save, they are God’s. But I’m learning more and more that I can be an instrument. But that’s also not really the point of this writing, either. This morning I had to sit down and write because my heart is just pierced through thinking about Hendrick.

I don’t know why this morning, of all mornings, he is on my mind but yet here I am, just having finished breakfast with Sammy and I can hardly hold the tears back. Hendrick is 6 years old. I picked him because he has the same birthday as Sammy, and he had been waiting for a sponsor for over 6 months. He lives in Indonesia. He has 4 brothers and sisters. His father works as a farmer and sometimes his mother helps his dad. Together they make an average of $55 a month. That’s right, I said $55. The $38 a month it costs to sponsor a child is almost equal to their entire earnings. To help out, Hendrick takes care of his siblings and runs errands for his dad. He is 6 years old. It blows my mind. That is only 3 years older than Sammy, barely old enough for kindergarten, and he is the man of the house while his dad is working.

I watched Sammy devour a banana, 2 blueberry muffins, some corn pops, and grape juice for breakfast. He is wearing space ship pajamas. Does Hendrick have pajamas? What did he have for breakfast? Did he make it by himself? Has he ever had grape juice and blueberry muffins? Was his mama there to wake him up with kisses and good mornings or did he get himself out of bed and then go wake up his siblings? Does he even have a bed? Does he get 3 meals a day or does he only eat when he’s at the child development center that Compassion works with? 

How must his mother feel, watching her child sign up to ask for help from an unknown person halfway across the world? What does that kind of helplessness feel like? As a mother there is nothing more painful I can consider than watching my child suffer. My heart hurts for his parents this morning too. And I wonder - we are only helping Hendrick. What about his brothers and sisters? I want to box up clothing and food, and empty our bank accounts (which are not full of much these days) and send it to them. I know that what we consider a “hard time” financially would be indescribable wealth to Hendrick and his family. But that’s not how sponsorship works. I don’t know what they need, that’s why you send money, and the center works with the family to answer THEIR specific prayers, not my prayers for them.

That’s why God is in charge of these things. In my finite knowledge, I don’t have the foggiest idea what they need. But the mama in me wishes I could wrap him up in my arms and make sure he is never hungry, scared, worried, or even uncomfortable ever again. But I can’t assure that, not in this world. What I can do is send our gift to him ever y month, and pray for him, and his family, and the workers that are helping them. And really, that should have been listed first. We treat prayer as a Hail Mary pass at the buzzer instead of the first and most important game plan. Praying for someone is powerful stuff. Because of the blood of Christ, we have access to the throne of grace. I can go before God, the One who created everything we see, the King of all Kings, kneel before him and ask him to watch over Hendrick. God will hear me when I ask; he promises us that he hears all our prayers. We don’t always like his answers, but we know he has a heart for the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the downtrodden. I can ask that his heart will be tender towards Hendrick and his family and that our gifts and prayers, however paltry they may seem, will make a difference in his life. I might even pray for grape juice, blueberry muffins, and spaceship pajamas for him. Every little boy needs some of that.  I am truly, desperately, clinging to God’s robes and begging him to help this little boy specifically. I can’t remember the last time I prayed with such fierce intensity.

I think what gets me this morning is for the first time; poverty has a face for me. A 6 year old face in Indonesia. And it’s such a cute, sweet face. He is not the face of poverty, that’s the wrong thing for me to say. He’s a little boy, with a family and things he likes and dislikes. He’s a child of God – the same God that I pray to and call Father and Lord. Hendrick is so much more than a mission or a sponsorship. That hit home to me when I read this blog by Anne Voskamp A HolyExperience. It’s relationship that is missing in our broken world. Hendrick is the first time I’ve ever tried to form a relationship with someone outside my cushioned existence. It hurts ya’ll, when you let it in. But it’s a good hurt. I don’t know where this journey will go. But hopefully someday it will take me to Indonesia to hug a little boy’s neck and tell him I love him. And then I’ll give him a blueberry muffin and watch him savor every bite.