When I was 22 years old, the year after I graduated from college, I spent one year in NYC volunteering as a full time staff member at a homeless shelter for young mothers (under age 21) and their children. This was the most life changing experience of my life. Now this was 20 years ago, but there are still some moments that I remember like they were last week. There are also certain residents of that shelter that I have carried in my heart with me for the past 20 years. I think of them often and wonder what became of them. It baffles my mind to think that those babies and toddlers are the age of my oldest nieces and nephews now. Even though they are forever babies in my mind, they are all young adults now, the age that their Mamas were, the age that I was, when I knew them.
One particular boy has been on my mind quite often lately. He showed up in a dream a month or so ago and then I couldn't go back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about him. Ever since then he keeps coming back into my mind. I just feel like he is going through something big right now and God wants me to pray for him so I just keep praying and worrying and wondering and praying. So this boy....we will call him Donny, would be 24 years old now. He came through the shelter twice in the year I was there and was there about four or five months in total. He was four years old and had a two year old sister. His mother took decent care of the children. They were always clean and fed, but she seemed to keep them at arms length. It was clear after awhile that they had all been in some very abusive situations and although she knew how to take care of their basic needs, I am not sure that she really knew how to love them. She was often very hurried and short with them. She seemed more tender with the younger sister than she was with Donny. He always just trailed along behind them, very quiet.
I have two very distinct memories of Donny. The first happened one evening as dinner was wrapping up in the cafeteria. A fight broke out between two of the mothers. Some of the staff and other mothers were trying to get the fighters to stop, while another staff went for security. Other moms were making sure the children were out of the way. Donny's Mother was front and center in the middle of the drama trying to talk down the two girls that were fighting. I guess in some way that was a good thing. But this fight was bad. As a mother wouldn't your first instinct be to make sure your kids were out of harms way. That is what my first instinct was. There were already staff involved trying to break up the fight and someone had already gone for security. I was scanning the room making sure that all the little ones were out of harms way. Most of of the mothers had taken care of this, in fact all of them had, except Donny's mother and the two that were fighting. They had their kids out of the way. They had the babies of the two fighters out of the way, and one of them had Donny's sister. But where was Donny? I saw him behind the serving line. He was huddled up against a cabinet, rocking and crying. The fight was headed straight towards the serving line. Now the serving line was not bolted to the floor in our cafeteria, it was on wheels. If the fighting girls slammed into it, Donny would be crushed up against the wall. Thank God I saw him soon enough. It was like a scene out a movie where someone gets pulled out the wrecked car just before it explodes. I ran over there and snatched him up and yanked him out of the way right before those girls smashed into the serving line. Donny was terrified and he did not want to be picked up. He was screaming and kicking and crying. My adrenaline was going pretty good at that point. I realized that he was hiding back there because he had obviously witnessed enough violence that he was terrified enough to hide. In retrospect now, with more experience under my belt, the poor thing probably had PTSD and nobody realized it. He probably needed more help than he ever got. One of the other mothers took him from me as we worked on resolving the rest of the crisis. Later I told his mother what had happened and she just kind of shrugged her shoulders and told me that he gets like that. She didn't seem to realize the danger that her son had been in.
The second memory I have of Donny is even more heart wrenching. One afternoon his mother was in the staff office using the phone to try to make some housing arrangements. Donny was napping in their room just down the hall. While she was on the phone he woke up screaming with a nightmare. I went to get him for her. I picked him up and brought him into the office and sat down with him on my lap. He was still crying so I just hugged him and patted him on the back. His body was all tense. I remember thinking that I was holding a child that has never felt love before. That thought hit me so strongly. I could feel it in his body, the way his body was tensed up. So I just held him and prayed that he would feel my love. I just wanted this little unloved, terrified, four year old boy to feel loved for once in his life. After a while I felt his body relax and melt into mine. He never said a word but I held him for the longest time. I don't remember what happened next or what his mother and I talked about, I just remember holding him. It was such and incredibly sad and powerful feeling all at once holding a child that had never been loved.
I wonder what happened to Donny after he left the shelter. I wonder what the rest of his childhood was like, what kind of man he grew up to be. I wonder why he is weighing so heavily on my mind and heart right now. Donny, where ever you are I hope you know that you have always been loved, not just by me, but by God. He has always been with you and he has always loved you.
If you are reading this, say a prayer for Donny. That isn't his real name, but God knows who he is. Pray that he gets through whatever trials he is going through right now. Pray that he has love in his life, that he finds love in his life. Pray that he knows God or that he is led to find the love of God in his life. Just pray for Donny. Pray for all those lost and unloved kids out there who have never felt love from another human being before.
