Archives for October 2016

We didn’t come simply to hold babies and play with cute toddlers with pigtails. We didn’t come simply to pat older children on the back and sing EIEIO. We didn’t come simply to assess waiting children so that when their papers pop up somewhere, we’re ready to help find families for them. All of that is good, very good.

We desired to do even more. We came for this. We came to serve those who serve. everyday. those who are paid little to do the most significant work. who are simply called “working staff” and are often criticized for not doing enough while they work in a system that often doesn’t support much more. We came to bless them.

It took much less time than we anticipated for curiosity and uncertainty to become eagerness to be vulnerable and pleasure to become honored guests of ours.

As children toddled around us and looked on, we washed the hands that serve. We spoke to each woman as we did, in words many of them did not understand and yet somehow understood.

You work so hard at what you do. You are so good with the children. Look how much she wants to be close to you. You are so important to her and to this place. We are so thankful for you. 

We saw a lot of smiles, more than we had ever seen there before. And, everything just seemed somehow brighter and lighter. What had felt like them and us just felt more like we, all women honoring each other and serving together for big big things…a spirit that was contagious.

Their smiles and sense of honor must be contagious too because all of us can’t stop smiling and feel like we were the ones served.

When the bowls for the masses remain on the sill, and the pots of soup are put on the table, and the ayis are caring for those who need help…

Until the ayis notice and make all sorts of chiding noises with their tongues and take the pots away. Don’t get mad at us. We didn’t tell. We just took pictures and giggled.

Sometimes, the very things people think are useless and not worth much are really something beautiful.

Donated sensory bottle kits of glue and glitter, little beads and goodies from our basements, shreds of foil ribbon we cut off of pompoms that we brought as toys, and our empty water bottles = trash to treasure….and lots of awestruck eyes from children and caregivers alike at beauty in a bottle.

I had prepped for something else. I planned to do a repeat of the Simple Interactions training I had done last year, going a bit deeper, training the trainers. I had been met with yeses along the way. Until I wasn’t. And, nothing was going to be what I planned.

That’s kind of how things go in China. I knew that. I know that. And, yet, every time it happens, I act like a good girl, nodding my head and saying okay on the outside and wringing my hands on the inside.

They still wanted a staff training though. Thursday afternoon, they told me. We are looking forward to it, they told me. I nodded my head and smiled. I am too, I told them.

I stayed up past midnight, remaking a Power Point, rewriting notes, searching through old video clips, emailing my mentor for more, texting Mark for ideas and help finding things that I couldn’t find fast enough with all my world wide web limitations. Somewhere along the way, I stopped wringing my hands and started enjoying the process.

By the time I walked into the conference room, the smile I gave to the front-row administrators and the working staff in their pink sweatsuits in the rows behind them was the real thing. And, the message I offered them really wasn’t any different than the message I had planned.

We can give children good programs, research-based curriculum, the best computers and equipment…build the prettiest facilities with light-up music notes…but the best indicator of long-term success is simply relationship. In fact, we were made for relationship. Relationship is the key ingredient that makes all those other good things we have to offer work. There is nothing that can take the place of it–for the children and for us.

They sat up a little higher in their chairs and I could literally see their understanding grow as they started to see that this was not another in-service training that might tell them what they do that they need to do better or give them more they need to do.

I showed them videos of them caught last year and celebrated the connections evident there. And, I encouraged them that the most significant work that can be done is not what happens in the spotlight but the deep and simple interactions we have with children and with each other everyday.  Those deep and simple interactions change us and grow us and help us to become the people we were created to be.

When I finished, I closed up my computer, an administrator closed up the training and dismissed them and no one moved. So, I opened my computer back up and invited them to ask questions. And, they did. Questions about how adopted children adjust to life in America, about what is hard for them, about if they still see themselves as Chinese once they no longer live there, and how we talk to them about where they come from. I offered some answers as I could. They listened. I listened. They offered me so much more.

I can’t imagine the afternoon being any different.