Process

I have moved past denial... but haven’t yet fully processed what happened at the Fundacion.

Most often I’m unintentionally avoiding the thought. Occasionally I fully remember and it's hard to breathe for a moment. I wonder if I am to blame, if I truly did my best, if I was just a victim.

I wish that I had known in the beginning that Story did not legally own the Fundacion, that I never had the authority to promise the boys I wouldn’t leave. I wanted to help remove them from an orphanage, yet that's where five of my boys and so many others remain.

Is the answer simply that we were kicked out?

That the Guatemalan board voted us out?

That the owners demanded it?

That God has a grand plan?

That these things “just happen?”

That there is an orphan crisis?

That living, breathing children are treated as pawns?

I feel angry that I wasn’t somehow warned this would happen. I want to go back in time and renegotiate. I want to see them. I want them to not be hurting. I know that it isn’t healthy for them to see me through the bars of the Fundacion door. They scream for me as I pass by while I’m at the bus stop or going to the teacher house (right. across. the. street.) Sometimes when I pass, the gate is open and they bolt for me, hug me, tell me they miss me.

I miss them too.

I wish I knew the right things to do.

I’m working towards acceptance but it feels years away. When I think about them I feel an odd mix of despair and warmness. I’m glad that I had two years to pour into them, two years of teaching, of love, of a childhood... but I also feel the weight of a great injustice. I never wanted to be “one of those people.” Unfortunately, that is what I’ve become for the five boys (and many other children) still left inside the Fundacion. Yep, I formed an attachment… and left.

Six of my twelve boys have been reunited with their families, praise Jesus. I have a healthy relationship with them. They have a family and I am a friend, as it should be. I saw four of “my boys" and their two sisters walking with their mom yesterday. Angel hid behind his mom while the others hugged me. Praise Jesus, he hid behind his mom. He has a healthy attachment with her. She faithfully visited them. He has someone he can trust.