I can still feel him...

I read a post about India today that made me remember some things I think I'd been trying to forget.

I was on my second Tsunami relief trip in the south. My heart had already broken for the victims of this incredible tragedy, and I had even thanked God that I had been in India when it happened, not back home watching it all on TV with my friends and family. I was glad that I'd been in the country long enough that nothing shocked me anymore, long enough to know how to handle the heat.

In the nearly month and a half since I'd been there, the makeshift village had come to life. There were little playground plots, rooms designated for school and nursery. That's where I found him. In the nursery. Most of the children laughed and sang with us, offered shy smiles and hugs, but not this boy. He looked to be 18-24 months old, old enough to walk. But his mother was holding him in her arms while he looked on, silent. They told us that he had stopped walking and talking after witnessing his big sister's death by tsunami. Something inside me broke. "Oh Lord, oh Lord". I don't know how I looked just then, but something must have shown on my face, because the mother came closer and offered to let me hold him.

I love babies, kids too, but especially the terrible twos and younger. I usually smile and sometimes wave when I see little ones in passing. But this one I had to hold. He fit perfectly, like he'd been made for me, but I knew he hadn't. He was rather light for his age, I think. A skinny kid, but I wasn't surprised. I looked at him seriously, sadly. And for a while he looked at me with those big black eyes, but then he looked past me. "Lord this one, help this one"

I wanted to keep him forever. To fix his life, make everything all better. But I couldn't. I couldn't give him back what he had lost; his father, his sister, his childhood. I couldn't teach him to walk again, talk again. I couldn't refer him to a doctor who might be able to. I couldn't do anything for his spiritual needs either, because I don't speak Tamil, and he probably wouldn't have understood anyway. I'd helped build him a temporary shelter that will serve as his home for perhaps years to come. I could offer a fan and maybe a trunk full of food and supplies, and that was it. It wasn't nearly enough, but it was all.

I thought about him every day for a while, and then I pushed him from my mind. A day or two later I went back my real life from that, and now I'm back in the states, as far from him as I'll ever be. Halfway around the world. He didn't need me, I tell myself, he had a mother. But the fact of the matter is ...I can still feel him in my arms. Sometimes it makes me shiver, sometimes it makes me cry. It always makes me wish I could've kept him. And I don't even know his name.

"Dear Father, I'll never see that child again. But you are with him, even right now. And you love him more than I ever could. Please, if nothing else, bring him to Yourself. Send someone into his life to do what I couldn't do; lead him to You."