Emily's Kids

by Liz Hawes
(Minneapolis, MN)

This is part of an e-mail Emily sent me over the summer. I was preaching from Isaiah 58 about giving your life to serving others, and I asked Emily to write up one of her stories. Here it is....

"Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, Liz! I love telling stories! The problem has more been, which one to tell. I think I'll tell you about 'my kids' though.

Last summer, my family discovered that the brain cancer my mom has been fighting for the last ten years had been growing again. The doctors decided to perform her third brain surgery, as well as start radiation and oral chemo. That, among other things, led into a deep depression for me last year. But in the midst of it all, I ended up becoming a part of a very special 'family'.

At the time, I had been living several blocks from an apartment building that acted as transitional housing for families who had been homeless. Some of the kids from this building were a part of a tutoring program that I'd been involved in. On one particularly hot day, several of them asked me to take them swimming. So we went. My time with the tutoring program had ended and I knew I was going to miss hanging out with the kids. After swimming that day, I gave them my phone number in case they would want to hang out some other time during the summer. But I got a lot more than I expected.

The kids called me nearly every day that summer. Sometimes just to sing or rap on my voicemail, or ramble about whatever. Usually to ask if we could go swimming. By the end of the summer, D'Angelo (who's 8) had developed a rotating schedule for me. According to his schedule, five out of a pool of twenty kids from the apartment building were allowed to come each week.

By the end of the summer it had turned into something really special. We usually went to a water park or a lake, then we'd stop by McDonalds for dinner. I stocked my car with Gatorade and granola bars to tide them over till dinner. Whenever we'd see beggars, they always shared their snacks out the car windows. They tried to teach me their hip hop moves (they were taking a dance class all summer) and I tried to teach them how to swim.

Since last summer, a large group of them have moved to Hinckley and I still go and see them every other week. At first they tended to try to hide the hard stuff in their lives from me. It was all about having fun. Bit by bit though, they've opened up about their lives. I've felt really honored to be let in as a friend during some of their hard times this year: times of going hungry, living without heat or electricity, being expelled or being mistreated by grown-ups in their lives. We've talked about dreams, which are something they're at times hesitant to have. We've talked about faith and money and family and how to treat each other.

The kids aren't the only ones who benefit when we hang out. They cheer me up and make me belly-laugh. They've brought my stress down through a lot of personal pain and transition this year. They get me out of my own head. They teach me things. I sometimes wonder how we got to this point. I know how we got to this point though. God brought us together because He knew we needed each other.

It's ironic that you asked me for a story on a Sunday when you're teaching on Isaiah 58, because that's my 'life chapter'. That's what I long to see happen. And in a small way, I think that's what God has been bringing about between me and the kids. Because of it all, God's been bringing new life and healing and restoration to both the kids and myself."

written July 20, 2007