Gosh guys, I’ve noticed my blindness.
I walked into a center, Penrickton center for the blind and multiply disabled.
I expected to see beautiful children of God, precious, beautiful creations… but
right off once we got inside, the leader of the center told my group we
wouldn’t be able to work with the children much, because we aren’t certified. I
was more than bummed.
So we went over what we were going to do. Yard work, sounds good. Then we
would get a tour of the building, and hopefully get to meet some of the kids,
and spend a few minutes with them. The leader took us outside, and showed us
what all the jobs were… not exactly the most fun things in the world, but
tedious things that needed to be done. (: My job was pulling weeds from in
between all the cracks in the bricks along the pathway. At first, I thought
nothing of it… but I knew, God wanted to show me something through it. I prayed
and asked Him to. So He did.
He showed me how absolutely HUGE his love is for us all. His love is huge guys,
huge. HUGE! It’s UNFATHOMABLE! And he wants to get to know us. Just like
I wanted to get to know those kids. Just like I wanted so much to just go in
and love on those kids… God wants to come into our lives, and COMLETELY comfort
us, hold us, and LOVE on us. But, like I had to take care of the weeds growing
out of the cracks… the same is true in our lives. God has to weed out the stuff
in our cracks. He has to pull out everything from the dark cracks… that may NOT
be too pretty! It may get dirty! But, afterwards… after He pulls out all
of the stuff, it will be so amazing. After all that junk gets pulled out,
FINALLY, there will be room for Him in our hearts and lives. So He WILL come
into our hearts and lives if we let Him. He wants to. Just like I wanted to
come and love on those children. He’ll rush in the doors, and get excited. And
He’ll completely love on us. Completely. COMPLETELY. Because He does completely
love us.
Our work outside was done, and finally we were allowed to come inside. After
what God had just shown me, this was really… amazing. To have weeded, and now
be entering. We came in, saw where the children slept, which all the rooms were
painted with vivid colors… because even though the children are all blind,
sometimes they get glimpses of color on the walls. So they keep up with the
painting, and make sure that it’s always bright.
(Another analogy God showed me, we should always be renewing ourselves in Him,
constantly coming to Him, meditating on His word, keeping ourselves spiritually
nourished.) The rooms were so cute.
We were shown around a little bit more, the bath room (God brought to mind John
13:14-15), some other office areas, and things like that. Finally though,
finally, we were going to go meet the children. I was so stinken’ excited.
The doors opened up to the multi-purpose room, where the kids spend all of
their time, from the time they wake up, literally until they crash on their
pillows. Everything was so cool in there, texturized, colorful, noisy… awesome.
It was so playful, I loved it. Immediately, we met a girl named Madison. She
was ADORABLE! The leader described to her, “Now Madison, I have a group of
people here! There’s a biiiig group! All standing right in front of you. Do you
want to say hi?� She stuck out her arm, to grab onto the leader, and stood up.
“Hey!� She said. She was around 8 or 9 probably. So cute. She sat back down,
and said, “I’m gonna sing you a song!!!� So she started singing. She had an
amazing voice… for real. No embarrassment or self-consciousness ever crossed
her mind. She was just totally into it.
The leader started singing with her, and so she had her stop singing, and was
done herself… so we moved on. Next, we met a boy Joel. Joel was also probably
9, and Joel LOVES Michael Jackson. I mean LOVES. One of the girls had her iPod
touch on her, and so she pulled it out, and put it in the little wooden box
Joel was playing in. Joel had cystic fibrosis though, and so his arms and legs couldn’t
move right. They were stuck bent, but man, did he go crazy when he heard that
music playing. He started laughing, and playing with all the little bells and
things in the box, it was great! Again, he wasn’t inhibited by any
self-consciousness or embarrassment… Or doubt of what he liked. He was just happy.
We met a 12 year old boy, flying down a slide, LeBron. He let out a scream
going down. He got to the bottom, met us all, and busted out in song. We all
sang along with him, and then he had us smell him, because he had just gotten
out of his bath (: How I wish I could be like him sometimes.
Those were the main stories of the kids we met, so then we went over for
a group shot. Madison grabbed our hands, and followed us over… wanting to be in
our picture (how cute!), and so we all gathered together around the Penrickton
center sign, with Madison in the front row… when the leader brought over the
most precious beautiful child I’ve ever seen. She looks at me, and asks if I want
to hold her, I melt. YES! Her name is destiny, she also has cystic fibrosis…
but she is much, much stiffer than Joel. She can’t move at all. But, she is
fearfully and WONDERFULLY made, and is perfect. I smile and talk to her, she
smiles back… She’s so happy how she is. So, so happy guys! She is so
precious, and all I can think about while she’s in my arms, is how God is the
Creator of all of us. He has made us all, and He KNEW what He was doing when He
made us. I found out later that precious little Destiny, was one of the oldest
children in the facility. Yet, here she was, so small and lying in my arms.
Guys, what I’m trying to get at here… is these children are all physically
blind, and they are all so full of hope, and life. They are all physically
blind, and yet they are FULL of confidence and pure joy! So really, are we the
blind ones? We’re so distracted by the things we see. So blinded. We’re so
often afraid of what other people will think if we act a certain way, or do a
certain thing… yet these kids don’t mind at all. I wish I could catch a glimpse of that.
God’s moving in these kids. And He’s showing me, that He wants to move in ALL
of us the same exact way. He DOESN’T WANT us to be afraid anymore of what people
think, He DOESN’T WANT us to be blind anymore in that way. He WANTS to LOVE us
completely, because he DOES love us COMPLETELY.
I’m TERRIBLY sorry this blog was so long, but these kids impacted me so much… I
just had to share everything God spoke to me with you, and I couldn’t think of
how else to do it, but going through it all. Haha.
