Lessons from A Five Year Old Guatemalan Boy

There are blog posts that need a lot of words and others that do not. This falls into the “fewer is better” category. Finding Freedom through Friendship board members can get ourselves into trouble with too many typed characters. Our trips to Guatemala expose us to the bitter side of inhumanity that can sharpen tongues and make fingers fly on the keyboard when we feel the need to shout out the unfairness that pervades the lives of widows and their children in Central America. The desire to expose these issues can lead us down philosophical paths that we have no right to travel. We can’t cure the world of all of the traumas. Instead we choose to celebrate the bright moments when, for a moment, the positive shines and obliterates the dark side.

This is Charlie. Charlie was conceived in a moment of trauma. He was not planned, nor was his conception wished for. From the moment he was born, this doe-eyed baby was accepted into his mother’s life without question. Her husband took this new life into the family’s circle just as he did his own children and he placed the same amount of hard-earned food into this child’s mouth as he did his own. When her husband died of untreated diabetes two years ago, Charlie mourned the only father he knew. When his fifteen year old sister suffered the same fate his mother had, he grieved. Hunger, substandard housing, poverty and fear lived in the same house, but this five-year old and his family existed in a state of acceptance rather than anger.

Finding Freedom takes financial license with our donor’s money occasionally….we sometimes treat our widows and their children to dinner at the Guatemalan equivalent to a McDonalds restaurant. Often it is the only time our FFF children have had this treat; French fries, fried chicken and a soft drink.

Heaven on a plate.

Add a paper crown and Charlie felt like royalty.

A five year old who thanks God for the blessing of french fries before he partakes is a gentle reminder to all of us. Born of trauma; raised in poverty and hunger; still feels blessed.

Thank you for the reminder Charlie.