Through the eyes of a child

McK, Bec-Bec, and Brady

This summer before I came to China I had the chance to go spend a few weeks with family in Minnesota. Among my family there are two precious little cousins, Brady (age 7) and McKayla (age 6). The first night I was there, as I shared with my cousin and his wife about Maria’s Big House, Jen suggested that I should talk with the kids about where I was going since they were a bit worried about “Bec-Bec” going so far for so long. So the next morning when the kids got up, we sat at the computer and I showed them some videos from the Show Hope blog along with pictures of this big blue house I would be getting to live in. We started, of course, by watching “MBHOH has Beiber Fever” which they loved. Each time a video would end, they would ask for another, and several of the videos they asked to see numerous times. After about an hour, we took a break and decided we would watch more later on in the day. That evening after dinner Brady asked “Bec-Bec, can we watch some more ‘Hope Shows’?” I knew he meant “Show Hope” but I felt as though his name for it was so fitting because yes, they were shows of hope. It was as though they too were getting a glimpse of the hope that is taking place among these four huge walls.

The next day McKayla asked if we could draw and we decided on a picture of MBHOH that I could bring to China with me to put up on my wall. It started with one piece of paper. I drew the house and she colored it blue and drew in the white clouds. After watching a few more videos and seeing a few more pictures, she decided she wanted to add the playground, so we moved on to paper number two. We made sure to get the colors on the slide just right, and added a few of the rocking-horse type toys also found on the playground. Then of course we needed the swing set, so we added page three to our masterpiece (keep in mind that this was also not a one-day project, rather we added to it day by day). On the last day of our “masterpiece” McK decided she wanted to add a pool, so we did. But there was still something missing… the children. So we went back to some videos and thumbed through some pictures in the Miracles 2010 book and she found a few she wanted to add. But for a 6-year-old, the picture of course was not complete without a giant rainbow hovering over the big blue house.

Fast forward a few months…

Last night this four page picture (now hanging in my bedroom) caught my eye. All the children in the picture are smiling. Jessica is going down the slide. Isaac and Jaelynn are in the pool eating ice cream. Judah is riding in a Little Tykes car. As I looked closely at these pictures, I got a little glimpse into what McKayla's 6-year-old eyes saw when she saw pictures of the precious children here at MBH. She didn’t see the wheelchairs, the scars, the disabilities. She saw happy children just like herself; the only true difference between them being their need for a family. She later asked me if I would like to adopt a child from China one day when I get older (she still thinks I am a teenager, haha) and I told her I would; she replied “me too, when I grow up.”

I am not implying that we look at everything through “rose colored glasses,” but what an amazing thing to be able to look at these precious children and not see a disability but a child that God has intricately created who is simply in need of a family, of someone to say “me too.” She didn’t have to think twice about it, rather she realized the need and decided she would want to do something about it when she could.

Funny side note: there was a picture in one of the Miracle books of Isaac as a baby sitting in a chair strapped in with a black seat-belt. I figured the kids would ask why he was buckled in, but instead, Brady excitedly exclaimed “Hey, is Isaac a black-belt in karate?” J

To check out these videos from MBHOH, go to:
http://blog.showhope.org/category/orphancare/marias-big-house-of-hope-orphancare/