a dichotomy.

While playing a game at Storytime on Tuesday, he was jumping up on me, asking me repeatedly to be held. I did, as long as I could, but he’s seven and lanky. Hardly someone I can hold for too long.

I held him through the story, working hard to keep him focused.

Wednesday found us struggling during Playhouse, as he asked me 101 times for a Superman coloring page. He was throwing things, breaking things, and fighting everyone. We reviewed our house rules.

And then Thursday, when Thida was nearly to tears recounting what he’d said that morning.

He said he likes it at our house because we love him, but his parents don’t love him. They only hit him.

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I can’t speak to their feelings, nor can I imagine a mother not loving her own child, but it’s true that they hit him often. It’s true that they don’t love in an obvious way.

It’s also true that we do very much love him. I can speak to my own feelings, and he’s very close to my heart.

He’s seven, and quite a mess, as his life has been. He’s had significant adults in and out of his life, moving between prison sentences and questionable lines of work.

He only knows life with violence. We are reviewing, nearly every day right now, that when he’s at our house:

We play. Together.
We don’t fight.
We don’t bite.
We don’t kick.
We don’t hit. 
If we are angry, we use our words.

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This week there was drama about why he isn’t in school–school our community fund paid for him to attend at the beginning of the year. Thida had provided her son’s old uniforms and we got him a bag; we even started sending breakfast extras for lunch. He was sent to Bangkok in the middle of the year and then returned, like something purchased from Target.

Meanwhile, his aunt is asking to join our literacy class–which we’d love for her to. But it’s also heartbreaking. She’s 19 now, and was taken out of school since we got here. We did everything we could to keep her in school, and it didn’t work. She was sent to Bangkok to work, and is now back, raising a baby on her own in the same broken environment as her nephew, and asking for literacy classes.

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And then last night found us with his mom on our floor, in a panic attack, after her drunken family members created a brawl outside.

Stephen went back to the house to ask after their son, and they said he was sleeping. He was doubtful the child slept through all the shouting and fighting, and peeked in on him. He was wide awake.

“Do you want to come to our house? Are you scared?”
“Yes.”

We learned his mom is pregnant with another little baby, and now we’ll be taking her to clinic this week. We work hard to create a culture of celebrating pregnancy in the neighborhood, so I told her I was happy for her.

It was automatic; instantaneous as I feared she was considering abortion.

It was a lie.

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It’s moved so quickly this week, from one mess to another.

It’s hard to reconcile it all in my mind. It’s hard to reconcile waiting on adoption, when we’re offered kids here that we already love. It’s hard to want to keep families together when they are so broken. It’s hard to send a child home into ugly chaos. It’s hard to see smiles as he fights through. It’s hard to know she’s bringing another little baby into this. It’s hard to fight for education when the brokenness is so much deeper. Its hard to hold a seven-year-old.

It’s hard to comprehend that his story, at age seven, involves drugs and trafficking and prison sentences and sexual encounters and drunkenness and stabbings and swords. But also a place across the street where he colors pictures of Superman, climbs on his auntie & uncle, plays with an iPad, and eats breakfast every morning.

Perhaps the dichotomy is overwhelming for him, too.