Have I ever told you why I became a children’s worker? Why
working with kids on the fringes became my passion?
It was my first summer working at a camp…12 years ago this
June. I ventured out halfway
across Canada with my sisters and cousin as we dared to try something new and
find out what really was so great about giving up our whole summer to live and
work on camp.
There were a great many experiences that summer and I
cherish a lot that I learnt and the people that I met. But one memory sticks
out….one moment and conversation with a child…her name was Robyn.
She’d be struggling for the first few days, causing a few
difficulties, and eventually I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk and
have a jump on the trampoline as she wasn’t doing well with whatever program
they were meant to be at that moment. As she jumped on the trampoline, the 17
year old version of myself actually had the wisdom to ask all the right
questions. Eventually Robyn just spilled it all.
Turned out she hated herself, as with having short hair and
being a bit of a tomboy, she always got mistaken for a boy. She was also living
in a really bad environment, got abused regularly and had gone through some
horrific abuse that at that point in my life, I couldn’t fathom any little girl
could be put through. I think I may have very well been the first person to
look her in the eye, tell her she was worth something and that she in fact
didn’t deserve anything she had been through. The conversation ended with me
promising to send her a postcard from Toronto when I went home at the end of
the summer, as she had never received a postcard before.
I remember being surprised at how well I had done in the
conversation with Robyn and how I had been able to keep my emotions in check
despite how shocked I had been by what she had shared with me. Later that
night, after all the kids had gone to sleep, I remember sharing what had
happened with the head cabin leader. When she asked if I was okay and gave me a
hug, I began to sob uncontrollably into her shoulder. She told me that these
things are never easy to hear for the first time…but that we should never
become so used to hearing them that we forget how horrible and unfair the
injustice of all of it is.
I have met literally hundreds of kids that I have come along
side, had conversations with, and journeyed with for both short and longer
periods of time, since this conversation 12 years ago. But that was the moment
that I knew God had called me to work with the Robyn’s of this world…to come
along side and be a voice to the children who no one was listening to and to do
everything I could to make their lives safe.
I did send a postcard to Robyn when I got home to Toronto
that summer, but the address I was given to write to couldn’t be completely
guaranteed that that’s where she was still living. I mailed it anyways. I guess more then anything, it was a
symbolic gesture asking that wherever this little girl ended up, I was going to
have to trust that God would have her back.
So…I suppose these things are supposed to end with a morale
or a lesson of some sort. I guess
it’s just this…sometimes serving just flat out sucks. Helping isn’t easy…giving
to others hurts, and will always cost something from us in return.
But it definitely helps to remember the why.
