When I picked Byron up for my first one-on-one, I didn’t know what to expect; I certainly didn’t expect to be adopted. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll start at the beginning, the very beginning in fact.
When we are born into this world we don’t get many choices. We don’t get to choose the texture of our hair or the color of our eyes. We don’t get to choose our geographic location or the climate in which we’ll live. As a matter of fact, we are stripped of all our civil liberties to the point of being forcibly evicted from our cozy homes into a sterol interrogation room where we’re promptly spanked. How’s that for choice?
Our parents also lie outside our scope of choice. We are born and they just are, Bob and Betty Parent. (or commonly today Betty or Bob parent.) We depend on them for everything.
But what would happen if we got to choose our parent(s)? Kind of like conventional adoption but in reverse, child picks the parent. This is where my good friend Byron enters the story.
His skin is the color java mocha. He is as wide eyed as a newborn baby absorbing the curious world through two glossy windows that perpetually scan with devouring insatiability. He is an observer, a learner, a free spirit that dances on the rhythms of the wind, a cosmic explorer wielding imagination to escape the horrors of his immediate reality. Then there is his smile… finding it’s being in the slightest smirk, it eventually bursts forth like an uncontainable, joyous secret that’s been pent up inside.
At age 13, Byron and has never had a father.
That’s where I enter the story, HIS STORY. As part of my job working for LUO, I get the amazing privilege to walk through life with children. Meaning, I spend a lot of time with youth, hanging out, studying the Bible, doing school work, and making immature jokes about farts with the boys. It’s a BLAST! One of my favorite parts of the week is spending individual time with one of the boys each Tuesday and Thursday night. As trust builds through “one-on-one’s,” the hard layers have begun to blow away like ash, exposing the vulnerable core of each child.
Byron’s one-on-one began with a car ride to the beach. As we rode in the LUO car or “taxi,” as the kids call it, I began asking about Byron’s past, his dreams, his family and everything else under the sun. We parked, kicked off our shoes and grabbed the soccer ball. (Yes I said soccer ball- I am learning to play soccer that unholy and inferior sport, proof of the great sacrifices I’m making for God here in South Africa.) We spirited like wild horses in the hard sand where the tide had just washed ashore, making long, leading passes with the soccer ball. Completely in rapture and lost in the freedom of play, we danced the dance called abundant life. Then I had to stop to catch my breath, abundant life can be utterly exhausting!
We started walking toward the water and Byron, as if magnetically drawn, gently slide under the crook of my arm. Mother Teresa once said something along the lines of, “there are more people in this world starved for love and affection, than for bread.” That brilliant evening, where the sunset burned up the sky, and a lightening storm danced on the distance horizon, I understood I was walking beside a STARVING boy; a boy desperate for love and affection. With my arm around his shoulder, I could feel every ounce of LOVE in my heart being transferred, as if by osmosis, into his body. In that moment there was a bond that was forged without words and as if to solidify it on the sandy shores of eternity, Byron stooped down with a feather he found and drew both our names in a heart.
After a grabbing some burgers and fries, Byron’s favorite food, I dropped him off at the small shack he calls home. I drove away with the words of Shane Claiborne running through my head, “It’s a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle.” I realized that the children of Ithemba had planted seeds deep in my heart, the seeds of friendship and family.
The next day when I showed up to Ithemba Byron ran over and handed me a letter. I waited until I had a moment by myself to open it. This is what it said (I will decipher a little for you, keep in mind English is his third language)
From: Byron Smith (his real last name is not Smith)
Dear Father,
I love you Zach Smith. I wish you was my father. I wish to be your son. You are like a father too, Zach. As I say again, I love you as a father to me. Father, sorry to say that to you and before I forget thank you very, very, very, very, very much.Like you said, Jesus loves us very much.
As you can imagine, it immediately brought tears to my eyes. A few months of spending time with him at Ithemba, one afternoon at the beach and the kid wants to adopt me. Jayakumar Christian, head of World Vision, India, says, “When we invest our money in the poor, we make the poor into beggars; when we invest in programs for the poor, we turn the poor into beneficiaries; when we invest our lives in the poor, the poor will reap life.” Can there be any doubt that lives are changed when we go beyond statics and actually enter the story of a child? Byrons are everywhere; we just have to open our eyes.
So may we go beyond giving money and programs and invest our lives, sowing a deep love that is rooted God’s love for us; may we enter their stories. **But be WARNED: you just might find yourself getting adopted!
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” –1 John 3:1
Zach
