As I sat on the sidewalk, I wiggled around to make myself more comfortable. Sometimes my sitting positions can be a little less than normal... especially on a broken up sidewalk with random puddles of i-don´t-know-what.  Lisa and I are playing UNO with a couple of boys who know much more Portuguese in their 2 and 4 years than we´ve learned in our 2 weeks. One thing I love about coming into this culture absent of the ability to communicate with words is the humility it brings.  The little fellas taught me some colors I didn´t know as we struggled to teach the smallest one the ropes of UNO.   As time passed on the sidewalk, I found myself gazing and contemplative as I so often do. My attention was brought back into the present when I heard the children´s mother yelling at the 2 year old. It turns out he was going to the wrong restaurant for the leftovers that would be their dinner.   He strutted back oh so proudly with an interesting swirl of foods in his little container and he shared with all.  As he piddled around, I had lost sight of the eldest boy.  Behind me was the street and in it I spotted him, crouched down using it as a toilet. As time crept on the reality started to hit me that... I was sitting on their living room floor. The boys didn´t have a way to wash their hands and they absolutely climbed on everything... as little boys do ;) I suffered some near fatal blows as they realized I was up to fighting and wrestling and tickling! 

Ben told us later of his conversations with the mother and with her 25 year old daughter.. both of which have chlidren in orphanges, on the street, and on the run.

Sitting on that sidewalk still, the boys took a break from their attack and I found myself wondering what I would do if I didn´t have a way to wash my children´s hands after they used the bathroom only to eat immediately afterwards and climb on the dirty Rio streetpoles and sidewalks.. or what I would do if I had children and didn´t have them to take care of becasue they had been taken from me... or what I would do if I knew in the pit of my stomach that there is no hope of them having any opportunity at a good education for themselves or any hope of us getting off the street.. because that´s just the way things work in Brazil. The stakes are higher and the falls.. harder.

And I decided I don´t know if I could do it... maybe I´m not strong enough, or maybe you just deal with it and the strength comes. I know one thing.. that more than anything I cannot ignore them when I pass just as all the passerbys did yesterday afternoon as we visited with them. The way I always have passed by because though my heart hurts, I don´t know what to do so I freeze up and ignore them... or give them some money or food and keep walking and never acknowledge their issues. If nothing else, I absolutely must express to them in any way possible that they are remembered.. that He comes for them and that they are loved.  Hope is a scary thing in their situation.. but it must remain. It is all they have.

I found myself grossed out. I wanted to go home and get a shower and lie in my clean bed and cry. Most of all I wanted to go home. I then immediately thought of the fact that... this is their home. They cannot go home. And then I realized that this isn´t just their problem.. and that I cannot leave and never come back. This is my problem.. it is our problem. We are in this together and that is why I feel that sidewalk visit changed me. I joined in their life.. even if for only a couple of hours.. felt what their life was like.. and realized the heaviness of the problem on our hands. And it is oh so heavy.

So now my question to my friends and myself and my God is how can we best love them.. and what does kindness do for them and what does rescue look like? 

As of this moment I don´t have much besides my tears and a fresh shower, but I realize that I must let them know they are remembered and loved... and that my God is one of hope and redemption.

Currently Reading Jesus I Never Knew, The By Philip Yancey see related