The Little Boy On The Corner With Big, Brown Eyes

Dark, olive eyes, stare straight at me, like a leapord, aching for a meal. Burning through my soul, like midnight oil, from the side of the road.

Seven, maybe eight years old…

Still, little did I know, he taught me with that gaze, tested my heart and what true strength was; moving me towards generosity.

My eyes locked on his tainted skin, his short, black hair, cut as if ready to attend private school….So far from my idea of any needy beggar.

My mind had been set; get to the grocery store, Costco, and get home before traffic stacked me, swarmed around me like a hive of bees.

Yet, he was there. This boy and his younger sister. Lighter skin. Yet same dark eyes, scanning helplessly from the corner street my husband and I turned on, this particular evening.

We drove on from this family of four; mom, dad, olive-eyed boy and wandering sister. But like a boomarang, my heart stopped short, from going in to look at buying, thousands worth of flooring.

“We have to go back.””Are they Hispanic?” I ask my Latin husband, who speaks Spanish as his first language.

“I don’t know.”

He drives slower, towards the store. Yet, his heart pulls tighter…I can see it. Drawing him. Compelling him. Aching in him to turn around.

And if anything I have learned over these two and a half decades, it’s that generosity is his gift. He is the teacher. I am the learner. And our marriage works best, when my heart beats violently, but my mouth stays silent.

Just then, as my better half feels the same tug-o-war that I had been feeling, as the boomerang in his heart draws him to questioning, I see our gas-hogging SUV, turning a sharp left, back to the place of that olive-eyed little boy.

And there is something about being married longer than you have been alive without someone. You start to think the same, act the same, feel the same, like Siamese twins, caught in two separate bodies…

Aching in the same way, with the heart of the other.

I unashamedly turn my head, back towards the family on the street corner, holding a sign that says, “Lost my job”.

There was no begging, no gimicks, no big long excuses about why this family is standing there with two children, begging for help.

Being near one of the meth capitals in the country, it’s not hard to grow cold, easy to feel stale and flatline, unemotional and disconnected from those standing out on the streets.

But God must have known…

I had been begging, asking for Him to make me tender again. Him to mold my heart pallitable, giving me eyes to see, as He sees. A heart to love, as He would.

Age does not create wisdom, tenderness does.

Then, instead of slowing at the stop sign and throwing money to this family, like most might throw a bone out to a dog…

My husband turns that SUV, as if driving an old tank engine, into the depths of an ocean whose current is going against it.

He slips in behind the trees, next to a building, so the onlookers don’t suspect anything; where critics would condemn these strangers, dressed like immigrants, standing on Ellis Island…

Humbled in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty, hoping for a land of freedom, only seeing rats in the streets, and factories using the immigrants to profit from their desperation.

My husband speaks English. They tilt their heads, as if we were talking to them in jibberish.

I look at the young children, knowing anyone who had been in America for any length of time would have children who are learning the language, in school, or other places ESL is taught.

But, these children too, stare back.

And there we all were, immigrants…

My husband, born in Peru, just retired. An American Citizen. The American Dream fully realized, after decades of labor and a determined spirit that just wouldn’t quit.

I was humbled. Interwining them as our people.

My husband must have read my mind, because he started to speak to them in Spanish. Surely they would get it. Surely that was their first language.

Why were they so far from home?

Just then, the mom with a thin face and sharp nose, utters, “Ahhh…Spanish.” She goes on to tell him they are Italian, but that she knows Spanish, some.

And to think, in our small, country town. In a land of cows, horses, and mostly white skin….

The very person who drove upon them, “happened” to speak a language they knew. He could connect in a way with them, that most anyone else who drove past wouldn’t.

I marveled as my husband stood outside of the car. Honoring the family by standing in their presence, instead of just staring at them from a distance, looking down on them from the throne of our car.

Not knowing, but suspecting, what he was doing…

I listened, hoping to know some words. Longing to be this real in a world where divisions have so broken us.

Why did it take a family, a homeless mother, father, son and daughter, begging on the side of the street, to connect us; Caucasian, Spanish, and Italian?

Why do we make fellowship so difficult and pety? Fake to face versus transparent to tranparent.

I saw the ache, and recognized in the moment, it is our needs that unite us.

Our common human responses of give and take, that make us step into one another’s lives with humility, dignity and grace.

I hear a grocery list. “Pork.” “Salad.” “Milk”. The sharp-nosed mother smiles. “Thank you. Thank you.”

And just like that, the little boy’s eyes, learns what his dad is teaching him…

Never be too proud to take. Never judge another person by the language barrier or location. Always reach out a helping hand, and always receive with gratitude and appreciation.

I was undone by this family. I carried them with me all throughout Costco. “What if they leave? We need to hurry.”

And while this famiy sat patiently on the street corner, waiting for God to feed them through the generosity of other people, I still questioned God. Doubted my own ability, and tried to rush what He alone had appointed us to do in that moment.

Why did I always think I could fall out of the will of God?

Slip out from His graces? Wasn’t He there in the store? There on the street corner? With my famiy in our five bedroom house? And with this family, who lacked a meal, but waited like the Israelites in the desert, for God to feed them?

Can we earn grace? Earn His hand, manna to feed us? Can we run from His presence?

Scripture says there is no way. He is here where we are now, in this moment.

Car filled with groceries, my husband turns back between the trees and building to spare discrace to this humble family, dressed well, but not speaking my language.

He doesn’t linger, but hands this family food. The mother thanks him. Then, I hear the gentle Father speaking, “Thank you. God bless you.”

Why had I not seen that famiy before? Why had I not even known any family from Italy in all my nearly fifty years of living here. Where they His test? His way of pulling me from myself? Calling me to a life of giving and not getting?

Was it God in His sovereignty, to provide for this family? Answering their prayers?

Tears streamed down my face as I think of me and my husband’s own journey. Refusing to go on welfare, poor with our own son with dark eyes and a new infant girl; trying to make ends meet, with no one to help us.

And if our poverty has taught us one thing, it was to overflow in generosity.

I hope I never act stingy again. If my ache speaks anything, it is to remind me that people are more important than all the things we esteem as vauable and worthy….

If these Italians and especially, that little boy with dark, olive eyes, gave me even a piece of His heart as we left our agenda and followed His leading…

Then, I am thankful. So thankful.

Grateful for this reminder that we are not in this life alone, but collectively a people who need eachother…

And they didn’t need us…

It was us that needed them.

We needed the lesson a little boy would teach us, as He looked from the sidewalk, and stared into our souls with his big, brown eyes.