January 13, 2008

I got to see Enrique and Jennica today. It's been a while. I was helping their church out with childcare for a while. I used to spend a lot of time with children at my old church. I forgot how much I love them. They remind me of things about myself. They remind me about Allen. I forgot about Allen. Allen Euchevarria. That was what he always said, that his name was Allen Euchevarria, as though there was no other way to say it. He was Five years old, and wore the same dirty sweatpants every time I saw him. He said he and his mom lived with Grandma now because Daddy was a bad guy. I first met Allen when I was in high school. Allen was a part of my AWANA group (AWANA= Boy scouts for Christians with less camping, more singing, and the same amount of neckerchiefs). Allen wasn't like a lot of kids in AWANA. I liked a lot of the kids in AWANA. Allen was inappropriate and gross. I remembered one time when i picked Allen up from the restroom, and he held my hand on the way back. I forgot to ask him if he washed his hands. I later found out he didn't, and all I could wonder was, if he didn't wash his hands, then why in God's name were they wet? Another time, it was Allen's turn to run in a relay race. When he got up to run, he handed me a bag of animal crackers and asked me to hold them for him. Where did he get them?, I wondered. He didn't have any food with him when he came in, and I certainly didn't give them to him. The answer to my question came most unexpectedly and unfortunately when I gave Allen back his crackers at the end of the race, and he stuffed them into his pants. Not just into his pants but into his underwear, into the inside of his underwear. I like most of the kids at AWANA, but Allen was gross. He was in appropriate and gross. He wasn't just gross or inappropriate, he was also difficult. He was always running away from the game circle, and standing up on his chair when he was supposed to be sitting down, and even when he didn't have crackers or toys or juice boxes in his pants, he always had his hands in there. There were rows upon rows of nice, well behaved children, sitting and listening attentively, and then there was Allen. And then there was me, yelling at him to sit down, stop fidgeting and get his hands (and whatever else he might have in there) out of his pants. Allen's mother got fed up with him a lot, and was always worrying about him being a nuisance. She told me that if Allen was a problem, to tell her, and she would discipline him. She even said that if he was too much trouble, she would take him out of the program. The thing about Allen was, even though he was an annoyance, and he was, well, gross, I could tell he wasn't doing it on purpose. He wanted to make me happy and he wanted to make his mother happy. Sometimes I think he wanted it more than anything in the world. Every time he screwed up or did something wrong, he would look at me and say "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," like he had just killed somebody. His mother would look at me at the end of the day and ask how Allen was. Then she would look at Allen and Allen would look at me, and ask that question he asked every week. "I did a good job?" Every week i would look at this kid who was fidgety and disruptive, and inappropriate and gross, and there was only one response I could give, the same one I gave every week. "Yeah, you did a good job, kid. You can go home now." That look of pure joy that he left with every week, knowing that I wasn't mad at him, was just haunting. I carry it with me today. It wasn't really Allen's fault that he was gross and everyone around him was nice and well behaved, and he was trying so hard. Maybe that's why I never told his Mom how crazy he drove me. Maybe it was because I knew that despite how inappropriate and gross Allen was, he belonged there, every Wednesday night, next to me, learning about Jesus. Maybe, though (and I think this is it) maybe I understood how much Allen was like me. I think I knew that I was going to be just like Allen someday. At the end of my life, I'll be just like a kid standing in front of his leader on a Wednesday night wanting to know if it would be comfort or punishment. I won't have any eloquent speeches then. I'll be lucky if I can even repeat that question I heard every night for a year in high school. "I did a good job?" I know what I deserve, but I still have this stupid, childish hope that I'll hear my leader say back something familiar. "Yeah, you did a good job, kid. You can go home now." At the end, we're all just children, desperately wanting the approval of the people in charge of us, and failing miserably. I never lied to Allen when I told him he did a good job. He did the best he knew how, and that was good enough for me. I hope that's good enough for someone else I know, because I can't offer Him much better. I'm just going to try, okay?

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"
-First John 3: 1a