A few days ago I found my self kneeling down in front of the girl’s dorm at the orphanage in Mexico with a 10 year old girl squeezing me as tight as she could. Her tears flowed down her cheek and I could feel them dropping onto my shoulder. It would be a lie to say that I did not shed a tear in that moment. Her sadness was my sadness.
Kimberly has a special place in my heart. I just met her in March of this year but I already consider her my little sister. I don’t remember the exact moment we met, but that really doesn’t matter. I can still hear her laugh at me/with me. She’s kind of silly like me; I guess that’s why we connected. When we said goodbye in March, she cried as well. I think her tears brought my tears then too. I gave her a gift then, a simple bandana. But it was my bandana though. When I came back to the orphanage last week, one of the first things she said to me was “I still have your bandana that you gave me in March.” (But of course, the words she spoke were in Spanish.)
So we spent Labor Day weekend together. Laughing. Playing. Doing normal kids stuff; which is great because I am really just a big kid at heart. And then Sunday came; the day before my group left. On Monday we would be gone before the kids were up and off to school, so Sunday was our last day to see them. That Sunday afternoon during playtime, all was going fine. But then about halfway through playtime she just shut down. She sat on the concrete bench and would not talk to me or look me in the face. I didn’t know what was wrong; I could only assume. “Are you okay,” I asked in my broken Spanish. No answer. She just sat and hung her head looking toward the ground.
Later on when we went to tell the children goodbye, I knew immediately what was wrong. I said my goodbyes and see-you-laters to the other girls her age and somehow managed my way toward her. I knew that if she started crying, I would probably join her. As she sat there with her head still hanging, I knelt down beside her and said, “Kimberly, hasta luego mi hermana.” And then she gave me the biggest hug I have here had. She cried, and then I cried. Then, all of the other girls her age surrounded us and gave us a group hug. I laughed then. I gave her a present. Nothing big. Just a pencil pouch and some colored pencils I had bought a few hours before; both wrapped in a black bandana. Then her and I took a picture and you can tell both of our eyes are a little red.
Kimberly wasn’t ashamed to say, “Matt, I am going to miss you. I am sad because you are leaving.” Sure she hung her head, but not because she was hiding. She was simply upset. Kids are good at letting you know how they feel. Maybe that’s a little of what Jesus meant when he said that we need to become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God. Maybe Jesus thinks it’s important to let those people around us know how important they are to us. He did say that next to loving God, loving others is the most important part of life. And just like children do, if we love the people around us we shouldn’t hide it. If we care about people, they should know. If we miss someone, it’s important to tell them that we care. I know many times I try to build my own walls to protect me from others (such an adult thing to do), but the other day in Mexico when I said goodbye to Kimberly…she had no walls. I knew that she cared for me. And for some reason that moment filled with tears and goodbyes helped me understand a little more about the person God wants me to be-a person that lets the people around him know how important and loved they are.
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