I was in Romania last week, with members our summer camp team visiting with abandoned children we have known for the past dozen years. Over the years we have grown to be like a large extended family, with our times together resembling “family reunions” more than typical “mission trips.”
For me, the aftermath of my trips to this hard place—a large government child warehouse marked by deprivation and exploitation—is typically deep grief mixed with a little gratitude and brave hope. This time, the proportion was reversed. I find myself overwhelmed with thanks, and anticipation for the future. Our teen and young adult loved ones are going to make it.
I’m not sure what the tipping point has been. Conditions aren’t much better for these guys.
Our ministry friends (long-term FCE volunteers) have managed to get a few out of the government orphanage into loving foster homes and group homes. Even then, they have carried crushing burdens from their past into their new living situations, and often floundered. This has only served to further shame and demoralize each young man and woman. The nightmare of the big concrete prison is over. They are finished with the beatings, the rapes, the food from a slop bucket. So why no new dawn? If the real prison is within—the thick grisly scar tissue of abandonment wrapped around each heart—what hope is there for release, ever?
But in a hundred ways this time, I could see that they are going to make it.
Nothing was more telling for me than our goodbyes. Picture the final scene from past visits: children thronged around us, wailing, clutching us as we squeeze into the van. Prying fingers from door frames as we attempt to pull away. In the rear view mirror, children running after us blind with tears and choking over sobs.
This time: A last walk through the village with my dear, dear Alisa. (More of her story, with name changed, is here.) She shuffled along in her shabby sweater and army boots with no laces, but her eyes were bright. There were no words from her, and not many from me, but uncommon understanding. A hug. “E timpul la revedere. Te iubesc mult, stii?” It’s time for goodbye. I love you much, you know? “Vin inapoi la vara.” I will be back in the summer. Moist eyes, a hard swallow. Each of us squared our shoulders, turned, and walked away. Her to the concrete building, me to the van. A glance over our shoulders, and we were on our way to such very different lives.
Back this week to my office, I came across a blurb in our Joshua Station newsletter titled “Resilience.” (Not sure the source… if you know please help me credit it.) I pass it along, below, as a resource for people working in various contexts. For our context, it struck me how aptly this describes what our young people are becoming. And even, what our mission community is becoming with them. They, and we, are coming to know that their pain is not the final chapter of this story. We are becoming more sure of other chapters to be written. The young people know us and need us, but not in the way of a frantic drowning victim grasping at any available arm or leg for just another moment of life. They can make it without us, in part because of the inner resources they have gained with us. When we return, I believe we will be able to love each other in an even deeper, healthier, interdependent way.
I’m musing about what has brought about this empowerment, and how we can continue to foster it. I know it has been a long process, and I’m doubtful there can be shortcuts. But what are the ingredients? Is it our long commitment to return again and again? Is it the long-term volunteers who have provided consistency? (For sure.) Is it that we have grown into family, so that we can no longer objectify these teens simply as recipients of our pity and charity? Is it any particular practical help we have given—or even not given? Is it the tears we have shed together, and our own vulnerability we have risked with them? Is it the defiant hope God keeps giving, in the face of years with little basis for it? I’d very much invite all who know our story (or stories like it) to comment below.
RESILIENCE
Resilience is NOT:
- Denial
- Stoicism
- Emotional Teflon… an impervious barrier to pain
Resilience IS:
- The choice to persevere in the face of adversity, pain, loss
- The choice to survive and thrive… in other words, LIVE!
Resilient people:
- know that adversity, pain, loss will not kill
- know that pain can bring new life
- know that pain is not the only thing going on
- know that going without can be ok
- can feel competent without the need for power or control
- see themselves in the context of a larger world
- see themselves and others realistically in terms of both strengths and weaknesses
- understand the value of a half-loaf
- are givers, not hoarders
- have practical, realistic hope
- accept responsibility for themselves
- are able to use their resources creatively
- are re-starters
- laugh a lot, especially at themselves
Scott Dewey
has family in Romania
hung out for 3 years in Bangkok slums, and loves going back
lives in a 110-year-old house in Denver
thinks about fishing most of the time
