Blessed are the Children

Last Saturday we volunteered at a Youth Center. It was so fun. When we got there, there weren’t any kids, but they slowly started trickling in, wary of the seven towering light skinned strangers that were waiting for them in the courtyard. After a while they started warming up to us, and we decided to play some games with them. We had intended to have two of the boys from our group teach Tae Kwon Do (sp?) but we thought we’d play some games to get the kids warmed up and relaxed while we waited for others to come.

We started with a variation on “Duck, Duck, Goose” substituting the words, “Falafel, Falafel, Shawerma”. The kids had remembered playing it with some students last year, and they were ecstatic. We sat in the circle, a couple of my classmates explained the rules, and then the craziness began. It was so cute. And so funny. Right off the bat, the first kid to be “it” picked me as the “shawerma” which really took me by surprise. I thought maybe he’d pick one of his friends, someone he felt comfortable with. Nope. Me. They picked me 3 times right at the beginning and it was literally a surprise every time, (which I suppose is the point of the game, but you know I haven’t played it in a while.) We laughed so hard when after a few minutes all the kids were saying, “I’m shawerma! Me! I want to be shawerma!”

We played that game for probably 30 minutes. And when one little girl sat next to me, she just wanted to talk to me. I don’t speak Arabic, but she was going on and on and on and I don’t know what she was saying. My best guess is that she was saying she wanted to make another variation on the game, where the person who is “it” picks a leaf and then instead of tapping on the head they give the leaf to the person they want to chase them. haha The poor little girl couldn’t grasp the fact that I didn’t understand her because I don’t speak Arabic. I kept shrugging and saying, “I don’t know!” and then she just started from the beginning again. We went through this at least four or five times. She just wanted to be by me, and when she sat by me, she just wanted to touch my arm and to sit right next to me in that personal space that never gets crossed.  She was almost sitting on my lap at one point, I think she would have except that would have ruined the game and she would never have been picked as “Shawerma”.

After a while, we tried playing some other games with them, like Simon Says, the Human Knot, and the Ninja game. But the little girls were having nothing to do with those games and they wanted to play games they already knew. For example, we played “Ice Cream” which is the most pointless game of tag ever invented. The person who is “it” is trying to tag people, but if they’re coming for you, you just have to clap your hands together and say, “Ice cream!” and you’re safe, but you’re also frozen, so someone has to come unfreeze you and then you can run to your hearts’ content. We played another one that was kind of like “Cops and Robbers” except there was no goal. It was basically just “run as much as you can, as fast as you can and as far as you can until the person who is “it” throws you in prison”. Haha. It was so funny.

We never even ended up doing Tae Kwon Do, the kids were having so much fun playing games with us that all we did was run around with them and they were happy.

I’ve been thinking about that first little girl, who was trying to tell me about her leaf game variation. It never perturbed her that I couldn’t understand. She would just start over again and we’d go through the same conversation. She never criticized me, never got frustrated, and never got disillusioned by the language barrier. She just simply loved me. Even after my roommate (who does speak Arabic) told the little girls I don’t speak Arabic, they didn’t exclude me or think less of me. They mostly just smiled and grabbed my hand saying, “Missy, come! Play! Run! Ok! Stop!” One by one, they asked, “How are you?” and “What’s your name?” and practiced the little English they knew.  I felt pure happiness and innocent love radiating from them.

Children are proof of what the basic human needs are. Later on, when the little girl slipped on the tile (oh how I wished we could take these kids to a place like Rock Canyon Park to run in the great open fields of soft green grass instead of the cramped little courtyard made of tile and rock) she hurt her elbow. At first, we didn’t know how severe the injury was, but upon inspection we found there was no bleeding or broken bones, she was probably just a little bruised. But she wanted to cry. And she wanted to be hugged. Isn’t it great how simple children are! The cure for a bruised elbow is to simply love the pain away!

The most profound truth and simple truth is that the world’s problems could be solved if we could each just love each other with that pure and innocent and healthy love that children use. We could heal the pain and anguish of a hurting soul if we simply love the pain away.

It reminded me of something Princess Diana said, “I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute, for half an hour, for a day, for a month, but I can give. I am very happy to do that, I want to do that.”

Because of my limited language ability, I can’t tell those kids I love them. But I can show it. There is an international language of smiles and laughs and happy playing. Children are such miracles, such blessings, and such great examples to me. It is little wonder that Christ invited the children to hear his words and come unto him as he taught the crowds, “Of such is the kingdom of God.”

Photo Credit: Jace Norton. The best photographer in our group.