los pequeñitos

We had a sharing meeting on Sunday night for the new volunteer who came (though she was here previously so I was a little ticked we had to do it). The sharing meeting happens every time new volunteers arrive. Basically we just had to go around and everyone in the group had to share their feelings about working with the kids.

It sounds super lame. And I thought it was going to be. But you know what? It wasn't. As we went around and people starting talking about experiences they've had with the kids and how their love for them has grown, everyone started to get a little teary eyed. Now that I know these kids and have worked with them myself these stories mean more to me than they did at our first sharing meeting when I arrived with other new volunteers. The stories that people relate now bring to my mind actual images of the kids doing these things: the looks on their faces, their personalities, their gestures, all of these things that I have come to learn about them as individuals. Lorena, our "madre" here, told us that after working with these kids we will never be able to look at children again in the same way and I am starting to believe her. It's so strange to me now to see kids places with their parents, like at church or just in the street, and I am becoming more and more aware of what a blessing and a sacrifice parenting is.

When I was in high school my AP English teacher once told us that he asked his dad if he liked his life and if he had to do it over again would he make the same choices. His father told him that if able to go back in time and change things he would not have gotten married and had kids—he did it just because everyone else was doing it. My teacher himself never married and has no children of his own. He seemed to think that this was perfectly fine and that there was nothing wrong with his father wishing he was not a father. I think it's sad. I mean, isn't my teacher glad that is father did have children? Otherwise he wouldn't be here. I think sometimes we forget that our very lives on this earth are gifts from, not only God, but another human being. No person on this earth was born without a mother and father in some way, shape, or form. It's pretty ungrateful to think that we are here just on our own merit—also it's just not true.

I am so glad that my parents are parents and that I am their child. And I'm glad that I know they're glad about that too.