This is a story of redemption. I know that word can mean different things to different people but sometimes redemption shows itself in strange places. Sometimes a person’s pain can be redeemed. Sometimes the anguish we’re carrying might actually be the very thing that opens our eyes to something disarming and unexpected and transformational…
When my son died in an avalanche, he was 25 years old. Justin was healthy, happy, loving and mature. We had a camaraderie that I valued a lot. Shortly before he died, he sent me an email. In it he wrote, “Dad, you’re the most honorable man I know. Thank you for teaching me how to love.” Those are the words that a parent longs to hear and so, when the news came of his loss, I was devastated.
I think I probably grieved in the usual way during the next two or three years. There was nothing exceptional about it. I was basically an emotional basketcase during the first year and gradually, over time, my mind adjusted to the "new normal" even while that big gaping hole remained in my soul.
Then one day, I realized that I wasn’t accomplishing anything of value. I was focused only on my losses. It was like I was viewing my pain through a camera with a zoom lens attached to it. I couldn’t see peripheral things. I think it’s healthy for a grieving person to focus on a loss. But there comes a time when we’re ready to take off the zoom lens and begin viewing life through a wide-angle lens because redemption is often found hiding in the peripheries where no one thinks to look.
But… how do we do that? How do we begin searching for something that we’ve never experienced before – especially when we don’t even know what it is?
Something told me that I needed to find people who had suffered more than me. So one day I sat in front of my computer and began googling things. I didn’t even know where to start. I forget how my search began but at the end of several hours I found myself viewing a video of a little girl living in a garbage dump in Latin America. The place was called "La Chureca" and there were hundreds of kids in that dump. I had never been to Latin America but when I saw that little girl, a mysterious feeling came over me that just said, “Go.”
Ordinarily, I’m not the kind of person who says, “God told me this, or God told me that.” There have been so many kooky people saying so many kooky things in the name of God and I just never wanted to be one of them. But when the word “Go” began reverberating in my soul, I recalled the day after Justin died. I remembered sitting on my bedroom floor with my face in the carpet, sobbing my heart out, and another mysterious feeling came over me then as if I was being told, “This isn’t an accident, Will. I am doing something. Trust me in the darkness.”
So after reading about that garbage dump, I bought a ticket, got on a plane and headed to a place that travel agencies never tell you about. As soon as I arrived, I knew my life would never be the same.
Sometimes we encounter things that profoundly change our outlook on life and when it happens, it doesn’t matter that former joys have lost their allure or that our foundations have been shaken. All we know is that the walls we’ve built around ourselves have crumbled into dust. Somehow, our unsatisfied yearnings no longer throb inside us and something restorative is taking place deep inside our souls.
Sitting on the outskirts of Managua, the dump has been called one of the most wretched places on earth. A few thousand people make their homes there. They sift through the rubbish for food to eat or things to sell. The children begin their careers early. You can see them with their sticks – poking and prodding the soil for plastics or metal or something of value. Girls as young as nine years old prostitute themselves to the garbage truck drivers in exchange for the first pick from the truck.
This is a world where violence and innocence live together and where a young girl’s best protection against a sexual predator is an emaciated body. The poverty is relentless. The shame is merciless. Disease pocks the scalps of tiny little heads. But despite all the danger, the place is strangely disarming. How can we poke our lives into such a world without lowering our guard? What is the point of my fortress when a daddyless girl wants to play with me? Brick and mortar melt like wax in the warmth of her smile and the glow of her eyes. It’s like falling in love with grace itself – and I found myself not wanting to leave that miserable place.
Maybe I was nuts. Maybe I touched something unclean. Maybe I contracted a strange disorder. Maybe the heat got to me. Maybe I hadn’t felt so alive in decades. Maybe I had to be emptied before I could ever be filled…
I have a faith. I don’t go to church anymore because the tradition that I grew up in isn’t very healthy these days. But… I began praying that I could adopt one of those kids from Nicaragua. It was an impossible prayer. I knew it. The Nicaraguan government doesn’t allow Americans to adopt anyone. I was also a single male who wasn’t getting any younger and no agency would ever allow me to adopt a little girl anyway. But I prayed that prayer because I thought maybe God is the God of the impossible and I was crazy enough to believe anything could happen.
I eventually had to fly home but on my third trip to Nicaragua, something unexpected happened…
I had made arrangements with a Nicaraguan woman named Diana to translate for me. I was learning Spanish but… Es difícil porque mi cerebro está viejo y decrépito. So Diana was a life saver.
As soon as I arrived at the airport, Diana began telling me about her kid sister named Jenny. Diana was one of those super-organized women who wanted to plan my itinerary by the hour - months in advance. I was the free-spirited artist who just wanted to go with the flow and Jenny, well… Jenny was a wreck. Her dad had died when she was two years old. The family lost everything. She spent her childhood in a Third World hell. She had slept on floors as a child, gone days without food, suffered various indignities, developed an anxiety disorder with debilitating panic attacks and an extra dose of depression on the side. Diana wanted Jenny to just pick herself up and earn some money for the family but Jenny was having a tough time of it. She was 25 years old when I met her – the same age as Justin when I lost him.
The good news is that Jenny was very creative. She wanted to be a photographer but she had no camera – just a cheap cell phone that took pictures. She also had the disorganized personality of an artist. She didn’t mind chaos in the bedroom she shared with her sister and that drove Diana absolutely nuts. It was an amusing spectacle to watch.
So one evening I took Diana and Jenny and their mom out to dinner. When we were on our way to the restaurant, Jenny began to talk. She said, “My family doesn’t want me to say this but I’ve been having problems. I have panic attacks and depression and I don’t know how to fix myself.” Those few words almost made me cry. Not because they were sad, but because I wasn’t used to the beauty of her honesty. Most people can’t do what Jenny did. She was open and transparent and she had no interest in cultivating a fake veneer of perfection.
When we arrived at the restaurant, she took out her cell phone and showed me her photos. I was impressed. They weren’t just pretty pictures. I could tell that she had an eye for composition and light and she also had one other thing that brought life to her work. She had a heart for vulnerable people. The more I listened to her, the more I saw how intelligent and analytical she was. By the end of the evening, I was in awe.
Sadly, after ten days, I had to fly home. Jenny surprised Diana by waking up at 5:30 in the morning to go to the airport with me. Ordinarily, Jenny was too depressed to get out of bed before noon. Some days she didn’t get out of bed at all. So… Diana couldn’t believe her eyes when her sister accompanied us to the airport. When we were there, I could tell that Jenny wanted to ask me something. But she didn’t. So I got on the plane and flew home.
Once back in Vermont, I received an email. It was from that crazy girl with the cell phone camera. She wrote… “I have an unusual question for you. All my life, all I ever wanted was a dad. I never cared about toys. I just wanted a dad to spend time with me and encourage me and protect me. Would you be my dad? Would you help me to believe in myself? Would you help me overcome my problems?” My heart melted. I realized immediately that my impossible prayer was answered and that her humble cry for help would begin one of the sweetest chapters of my life.
After telling Jenny how honored I was to be her dad, I sent her a camera with lenses and a computer too. Then I asked her if there was a school in Managua where she could learn photography. She told me about a photo academy run by the French government as part of a cultural exchange effort. We enrolled her. A few weeks later, I received an email from a psychiatrist in Managua who had been helping Jenny for free. She said, “I cannot believe the transformation that is happening to your daughter! She wakes up early each morning, goes to school, does her homework, and teaches herself photo editing online.” A few months later, Jenny’s professor said, “Your daughter is a frickin’ genius!”
Jenny graduated at the top of her class and has since established a name for herself in her field. When she visits me in the US, she is full of joy. She loves being in my workshop as I sculpt and paint. She says, “Teach me Dad! I want to learn!” When we go places, She brags about me to others. She says, “My dad is an honorable man!” I can’t begin to express the joy this brings after years of mourning. She tells everyone our story. People cry. It is a story of redemption. In some mysterious way, the most heart-breaking events of our lives gave birth to the most beautiful events of our lives.
So I’ll leave you here with perhaps the only words that really matter because… there are mysteries also hidden in the peripheries of your life. They are waiting to be found with a wide-angle lens while you mourn your losses and bear your pain. There is also a voice calling from the deep and offering to redeem that pain with words that are disarming, unexpected and transformational:
“This isn’t an accident.”
“I’m doing something.”
“Trust me in the darkness.”
“Go.”
*Read more of Will Kautz's work at his Facebook page.
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