Attachment Theory

Tonya and I have been talking about 'attachment' and some of the ramifications of 'not being attached'. We have seen this over and over again with some of the kids we work with. But we had a deep example of that this weekend.

Eden, our god-daughter and of course, Bob and Susan (our team members, best-friends, next door neighbors, etc.) just came back from Chicago on Saturday. They are adopting Eden who was born on Dec. 26th. So after we picked them up from LAX our team, other friends and family came over for a bit of an open house to see Eden. LaToya, a single teenage mom who lives across the street from us brought her six month old son with her. Other than us they were the first ones there and among the last to leave. Tonya has seen her son much more than I have, but we never had the opportunity to spend as much time with them as we did on Saturday.

Mario, her son is a real cute baby, he is one that the old ladies would stop and fuss over for awhile. Big cheeks and all. But I was amazed that he never smiles or laughed. I have been around a few babies and have always been able to make them smile and giggle. Just do anything really goofy or make some silly sound and that usually does the trick. But not with Mario. He just sat there seemingly thinking, "what is this stupid white guy doing?". As we were discussing this later on we thought the fact that Mario dosen't smile isn't surprising. We have noticed and Tonya has talked with LaToya about holding, caring for and spending time with her son. She is outside on the patio a whole lot without him. Some of the younger kids even say that their grandma is always on LaToya about passing off her baby responsibilities to someone else. It would seem to make sense that since LaToya never really had opportunities to make those emotional attachments with her parents, those same traits are now being passed to her son. Mario it seems, hasn't really been able to make some of those emotional attachments either. Hence no smiles.

So I played with him almost the whole time. Tickling, playing with his toys, bouncing a balloon on his head- all failed to get him to even act like he could smile. But I kept at it and I noticed how he would just stare into my eyes. Finally during an energetic (on my part) game of peekaboo he began to smile. Soon he was laughing. I even got him to have a couple laugh-so-hard-you-roll-over laughs!

But it really just made me sad. Seeing how some of God's beautiful children have to grow up is really hard.

Were past the "we are gonna try to save the whole world" phase of ministry and we know what we can do is very limited but it makes me sad. Sad and thankful. Thankful for my children, the children at our SAY Yes! Center in Compton and the other 13 SAY Yes! Centers across LA, that they are getting the chance to become attached to something- emotionally, physically, socially and most important spiritually attached. And I look at Eden and I thank God for the different life that she will now have the opportunity to live.

Man, what I have taken for granted in my life. Forgive me Lord.