When my children were young, I remember reading them a story from the classic Pooh tales. Perhaps you’ll recall the scene on a snowy day where Piglet finds Pooh staring at some footprints. Pooh surmises they might belong to a heffalump, or even a woozle, and challenges Piglet to join his investigation. Piglet is reticent, but agrees if Pooh stays with him. After a bit, they notice the footprints have doubled in number: possibly two heffalumps or, maybe a pack of woozles. Pooh sings a little tune to overcome his nerves “How cold my nose, tiddly pom….” and they press on. Eventually they see four sets of footprints. Now Piglet is alarmed, and the two sit down to have a think. Happily they realize that they’re walking a circle and following their own footprints.
          I laughed to the point of tears over it, but my little daughter sat motionless on my lap as I read. Her thin body was tight with dread, wondering what kind of creatures would overtake Pooh and poor little Piglet. Her fear was real.
          Another time we took our kids to an IMAX theatre. My son was only three then and climbed into my lap. The giant screen and surround sound made him feel that he was actually soaring off cliffs, falling down waterfalls, and following a stampede. I felt his stomach muscles tighten as he leaned back into my chest, bracing his hands on the arms of the seat. His adrenaline pumped hard and his fear, just as real.

         “Mommy, are we flying?”

          There is an old saying that if a child has a nightmare about a roaring lion, there’s no use telling him it was just a dream. To a child it’s real. Perception is reality. Children feel and experience things deeply.
          Brent Curtis talked about this in The Sacred Romance. To paraphrase, he said that pain comes to us like an arrow in the heart and some of the most defining ones strike when we are young. It feels like an ambush and our response is at a gut level. We may never put words to it. Our deepest convictions are formed from the wounds of these arrows, and the effect is a shift deep in our soul. We make vows to never experience that sort of pain again. And this plays right into the enemy’s plan for our lives. He wants to kill our hearts, because he knows that all genuine love, all meaningful work, and all true worship come from the heart.
          To lose heart, is to lose everything. Wise words from Brent.
          So how does that translate to an African orphan? While they may not know about heffalumps and woozles, the lion in their world might be real. They’ve no doubt seen some violence in an unstable culture. But worse are the deeply pernicious arrows of losing both parents.
          We can close the book, or leave the movie theatre with our children, but the drama of feeling alone, scared and hungry was unending and far from imaginary for many of these children. That is, before they came to our village.
          Last summer, in Kasozi Village, I held several of those kids on my lap as we read a story about crocodiles.  Several other kids stood around me, huddling close to catch every word. We read the book twice, and then played I-Spy on each page. After that we counted everything that could be counted—especially crocodile teeth. We must have pored over every page five or six times, and afterwards, they wanted to read it out loud to me in unison. They pressed on it seems, so reading time wouldn’t end.
I didn’t feel any fear in their bodies. I didn’t hear any terror in their voices. I didn’t see any fright on their faces. Rather, I experienced them drinking up every drop of mother-like attention from me, even if it had to be shared by seven other kids. I realized that physical touch and closeness was a soothing balm on all the real fears they have lived with for years. And page by page, we will try to love these kids back to life.

Do you think simple things like this matter?

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