When The Answers You Have Aren’t Good Enough

“But what’s going to happen to them?”

This is the question my brother implored me to answer and has continued to haunt me.

I had just answered the requisite “How was your trip?” question with my experience of heading deep into Guatemala City with the Families United team visiting a young aunt for a possible family reunification and checking up on some of the families and children already enrolled in this program.

My brother’s daughter, the same age as the youngest of these sweet boys…these boys who over multiple Casa Bernabè visits I had come to know. Their smiles so infectious and contagious, tucked into the pages of a photo album sitting on my coffee table. The new reality of their situation, reunified with family 3 months ago, weighted his question and made the answer that much more important.

“If not for the work of our Families United team, the city would swallow them. And even then, it still might.”

That was the best answer I could give him. In a country where more than three-quarters of the population are living below the poverty line, Satan’s attack on family is not easily defended. He stands in defiance against the very thing God is committed to restore. This is a life that most of us cannot even begin to fathom but, I saw first hand as we traveled deep into this city. A city, where, as my daughter has said, God has turned up the saturation all the way. A city filled with slums that are beautiful in a perverse way.

After traveling for more than an hour and half through the city, we pulled to the side of the road. Our first visit of the day was to an aunt that a judge had deemed as a possible guardian for two children living at Casa Bernabe children’s home. The team was uncertain of the home’s location and because of the known danger and violence in this area, our best option was to wait for the aunt to join us and guide us deeper into the depths of the city. 

My heart twisted for this young woman as we filed out of the vehicles and followed her into her home, a second story room, tucked at the top of a steep set of stairs, carved out with tarp walls and ceiling. The room, down to the vase of fake flowers next to the bed, had been meticulously cleaned, with nothing out of place. I can only imagine this young woman’s nerves as 7 of us traipsed up the steps behind her for her interview. As I huddled in the corner, sunshine from the “window” warming my back and the small space, my heart broke and my eyes welled with tears as she cried in helplessness and despair over her obvious inability to take in anymore children. With a two-year old of her own and a new baby due in just weeks, the task that a judge set before her, was just too big.

I wanted out, out of her room, out of the city. I wanted to undo our invasion into her privacy. I wanted to unknow her pain. But, as we have been talking about all week, we can’t unknow, we can’t unsee, we are called to enter in. So, we stood and prayed, over her, over her family, over her future and I continue to think of her, and pray for her, and wonder after what happened to her.

For this family, on this day, reunification was postponed. We know that God is the author of their story though and it does not have to end in the same way it began.

But, what’s going to happen to them? What’s going to happen to the children who have come before them and those yet to come? What’s going to happen to the families who have been reunited with their children, and those who haven’t? We are doing our best to show them Jesus, restore their hope, pour out unconditional love on them, reframe their their understanding of family, and empower them to not repeat the cycle.

Will you join your voice and your prayers with mine to see a nation changed? For God’s glory…