The Disappearing Children
I asked Kayiesha, “What do you see?” and she said, “Nothing.”
Too embarrassed to even look at herself in the mirror, hiding under a hoodie because her hair was looking too crazy, she said, and she didn’t want to see her reflection. She didn’t want to participate in the self-portrait workshop, an exercise we do with participants to help them see the love with which God created them. She asked if she had to look at her reflection or if she could just participate without looking. I told her “we need your full participation. It’s the only way you’ll see what you need to sketch.” So, she half-heartedly picked up the mirror in one hand and pulled her hoodie back with the other.
Too often, this is the reality of the young people we serve. Working so hard to disappear because everything they know has taught them to leave, to hide, to not exist. The disappearing children fathers leave behind are all around us. Boys and girls in our classrooms, parks, and churches, learning to vanish in the shadow of their father’s absence.
Retreating from everyday activities is easy to learn when your dad isn’t around to hug you, encourage you with his words and to show you how to exist in the world.
When Kayiesha, with a slow, unsteady hand and a loose grip picked up her pencil and began drawing what was looking back at her, she sat up straight, leaned into the reflection, looking for details in her face. Pencil marks on the white paper started showing up, and slowly a face began to appear.
The neglect, abuse, shame, sin teaching her to hide began to fade behind an emerging side grin.
While she and other participants were busy finding the freckles and lines of their faces, the truth of Scripture was being shared.
“You made my whole being… I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way… All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old.” — Psalm 139:13–16
Beautiful truths, this 12-year-old young lady, and all the others, rarely hear. We want them to hear it so loud they believe it long enough to stop looking away, to stop hiding.
Before children can know why they were created, they first need to know who created them.
By the end of the workshop Kayiesha had a smile beaming from one side of her face to the other, her portrait not quite finished, the details of her eyes still missing. She’s not hiding anymore.
God knows we can’t hide from Him. We’re trying to teach Kayiesha and all the others there is no need to. He wants us to walk with Him, fully alive in all of the amazing and wonderful ways His fatherhood created us to be. We are a glorious reflection of beauty and truth, not forgotten children meant to disappear.
