A Priceless Gift

One of the sweetest "fruits" of my labors at Shepherd's Field this summer came where I least expected it....in the opening of precious Wendy's heart to me in friendship. Though I knew her a little bit from my previous trip to Ch1na, teaching English to her, Stacey, and Grady everyday this time gave me a deeper insight into her personality and closer understanding of who she really is, behind the mask that short-term visitors only see. Some class periods she would be cheerful and responsive, laughing at jokes Melissa and I made about ourselves and answering the questions we asked about the day's material. Many other days, though, she would be sullen and bored during class-time, unwilling to give much beyond the bare requirements. As much as we tried to engage her or bring out the smart, personable self she shuts out, we couldn't and were left feeling powerless and incapable many a time. Our smiles and hellos when we saw her at other times during the day would be met with a distant stare and our pictures of her would have a frown or a hand covering over her beautiful face. "That's just how Wendy is," we were told by other staff members. She was known to be cold and distant and self-abasing, despite everyone's repeated, day-in-and-day-out efforts to love and nurture her. I felt like there was nothing that could be done, which is usually the point at which G0d decides to step in and show HIS power...

You may remember me mentioning a life-book project that we wanted to do with this oldest group of kids...we did in fact work on that for about two weeks, long enough for the kids to make a small book full of pictures and little snippets of their lives at Shepherd's Field. At first it seemed like we would be fighting tooth-and-nail to get Wendy to do a book herself...she doesn't like people taking pictures of her, so we didn't know how we would ever get enough material for her to work with. Once we brought out the pads of scrapbook paper, stickers, scissors, glue-sticks, and pens, though, something started changing in her. Over the course of the next few days she started connecting with us and participating more through art. None of the kids had ever done scrap-booking before, so I began with simple instructions for cutting out blocks of lined paper for writing and arranging them with the photos in a simple, rectangular layout. But Wendy just took off with the whole project and ran with it. She started cutting her paper into all sorts of amazing and creative shapes, arranging them artistically on her page, and framing her pictures and words in with drawings of butterflies, flowers, and squiggly lines. I was left awed by how beautiful and unique each one of her pages were, and didn't even force her to write as much about each picture as we'd planned so she would be free to keep expressing and opening herself to us little by little. She began to let us take more pictures of her and to share with us more of what the pictures meant to her personally. We even got to glimpse her sweet heart for one of her housemates, Perry, when she asked us to print pictures of him and then dedicated an entire page in her album to him. We heard about the people who were important to her, the things she wished she could change about herself, and what her likes and dislikes were, things we would never have discovered about her without this avenue of art. When our project was winding to a close and we told the kids we'd be finishing on Friday, she immediately asked with a concerned look "Monday?". We had to break it to her that it was time to move onto to new projects and units of study, but her disappointment pierced my heart.

She asked for and was given the extra page protectors from our scrapbooks to hold her sheet music, which gave us yet another opportunity to see how art reaches her in a special way. She is an amazing self-taught pianist and expresses music so beautifully. I was able to listen to her play several times and saw a side of her that only comes out at the piano or art table. She is a precious, precious girl who has been beat about by life for 20 years. None of us know exactly what she saw or experienced prior to coming to Shepherd's Field several years ago, but it wasn't a fairy-tale, happy childhood for sure. She was abandoned and left, first by parents and family, but now on a lesser scale by all the visitors who come in and out of her life and SFCV. This latter part can't be helped, of course, but still my heart breaks for all the goodbyes that her life holds everyday. Distancing herself from others is completely understandable given what she's been through...no doubt it would be my same reaction to try to protect myself and my heart after enduring a lifetime of hurt and sadness. She doesn't believe that people will stay, that they will love her for who she is, or that they will remember her when they have to go home. And yet they do. She is loved, and treasured, and pr*yed for by so many countless people, every day.

Through art and music, and the repetition of love and warm greetings we tried to give her day by day, class time by class time, Wendy started opening her heart at last to us. As my time to leave approached, she would ask about the day I'd go home and then say "When you go America, I will be sad. I will cry." I thought this was so sweet, but didn't realize how big it really was until Mama Jewel (one of the intern coordinators) told me later that Wendy never voices her emotions out loud like that or tells anyone that she will be sad. "For Wendy to say that is almost miraculous," she said. I immediately thanked G0d for the amazing privilege of letting me see this little piece of Wendy's heart changing and of getting to demonstrate His love in a way that seemed to be sinking into her. It's not me that did this at all....it's all G0d. He's the author of love and if Wendy saw anything good or inviting in me it was all His doing. I pr*y that she will see that. That she will know behind all of Melissa's and my love for her stands the unfathomable, unending love of our Father. I pr*y that she will pursue that love and continue to open her heart to it that He might come and fill her with His perfect comfort and strength and salvation.

Love you, Wendy-girl. <3