Excising Haiti

I knew it would happen sooner or later.

I knew that at some point, my kids would not like the story God has written for their lives.

Truthfully, it happens to probably every kid. You know, when your teenager decides your family vehicle is outdated and completely embarassing. Or when your 8th grader makes some comment about how all the other moms let their daughters wear shirts that show off their tummies. Or bra straps.  Or underwear.  Or when your boy is completely beside himself because you are making him attend youth group every week.

With kids who have come from hard places, coming to terms with the story God is writing is one of those "have to do" things. It has more layers than the basic teenage angst or peer pressure. It's about the questions of "who am I?" and "how does my story match up with everyone else's?"   It's about coming face to face with  why God allows bad stuff to happen and why He doen't always intervene in those situations.

And for kids who have racial differences between themselves and their peers or themselves and their family members, they have to come to terms with who they are and who their parents and peer groups are not.  For my kids, it means recognizing that they are chocolate and the rest of the family is peach.  That they are not the same as the bulk of the kids they see every day.  For my son, it will mean navigating the dating world where he might not be seen as an acceptable date for a white girl.  It will mean coming to terms with the fact that there might be people who will see him on the street at night and view him as an imposing black man.  For my daughter, it means having black hair in a white hair world.  It means knowing that there are some who have stereotypes of young black women as irresponsible, mouthy, and likely to become pregnant out of wedlock.  

This week, my heart sunk in my chest as my son took the first steps towards sorting out all of those big, grown up feelings. For some reason, he asked about a boy from school going to Haiti. I assumed he was coming to this question from the perspective that everyone's life is like his. (My friend, Lisa, calls this the mac and cheese moments in honor of a time in fifth grade when one of her friends reheated mac and cheese in the microwave by adding milk to it instead of water. Lisa couldn't believe her eyes because doesn't everyone on the face of the planet use water to reheat mac and cheese?)   I assumed Kenson was thinking that every kid has had the same experience and came to join a family via Haiti. As I explained that Kenson's story had Haiti in it but the other boy's did not, Kenson started shaking his head. The words "I don't want my story to have Haiti" rolled out of his mouth. And my heart started on a downward trajectory.

Oh how it is hard to hear him say that. Haiti is a precious story. One God gave just to Kenson. But once you start realizing that your story make you different, it can be very easy to wish that story would just go away. From before my kids were home, Psalms 139 has been a powerful prayer that I prayed for them. It contains such vivid imagery of a God who sees our children in our absence, of a God who created each person for a specific purpose, of a God who wants each person to believe that his story can be used by God.  And that continues to be my prayer for situations like these, that my kids would know that God saw them in utero, sees them now, and has His sights fixed on their futures.  That nothing that happened in their lives escaped His view.  That His love for them is visible in every moment of their lives.

From Psalms 139
"For you created my inmost being;  you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."