"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier." -Mother Teresa
Who was I kidding? Of course it was going to be difficult. I went into this week just like I had the rest though. I had convinced myself that it wouldn’t happen. But it’s Wednesday now. Tomorrow afternoon I will be on a plane heading towards the Amazon Jungle and leaving everything I have known for the past month behind. Before this month there were a lot of things I didn’t know. For one, I had never been forced to live with 20 girls in one house. I had never had to rely on communication other than English. And it’s safe to say that I had never truly had another human become completely dependent on me. I will be the first to admit that it was difficult and that at times I felt like I wasn’t qualified to take on the role. However, I will also tell you that after exactly 28 days with these children, I have never loved anything more than this role. Of course I don’t know what it is like to be a mother In the universal way people interpret it, but the children I have met don’t see things the way the rest of the world does.
To the children, a mother is someone who is there when they wake up in the morning; the person who feeds them breakfast. She is the person who gives you a bath and chases after you when you decide to run out of the house completely naked. It’s the person who tells you not to climb the wall in the courtyard, but holds you while you cry after falling off of it. A mom, to them, is the one that they see every day, who plays with them, reads to them, and sings them a song just before they tuck them in to bed. In their eyes, the person who chases away the monster that frequents their dollhouse is the best mom in the world. So on my last night in Cuenca I am going to have the guts to say that for the past month, I have been a mom. The love I have for the hundreds of children I have been blessed to meet is indescribable. The most amazing part of it all is that I am the one who gained the most from this experience.
It was Dilan who taught me patience as he took off running in the nude after his bath each afternoon. It was Marcelo who taught me what family really is as he spent an entire afternoon pushing his sister’s wheelchair around while the other kids his age played soccer. After 19 years of a normal life, Deanna showed me how resilient the human spirit can be as she maintains a smile although her body slowly degenerates. Rosa, a shy little girl at an all girls orphanage in the city, showed me what it really means to love someone as we sat in the courtyard sobbing when I had to say goodbye.
There are hundreds of children here that have changed my life. When I first got on the plane heading towards Ecuador I was determined to make a difference. To be honest, whether I came here or not, the children were going to wake up, they were going to be fed, and they were going to fall asleep at night. The difference made in this month was made in me. At first I am sure that some of my less flattering qualities surfaced. The long days, short night’s rest, cold weather, and screaming babies inevitably got the best of me. Luckily, the hardest week passed and through what I have learned here I have developed qualities I am proud to have. Without a doubt, I received a crash course in Life.
I can’t remember the last time I have been so happy, so blessed, or laughed so hard in my life. But along with that in the end, I have never had to say goodbye to so many people I love at once. There is so much I wish I could say about this experience and so many stories I would love to tell everyone. To put it bluntly, nobody else could understand. Pictures, videos, and stories could never help someone else understand what it has been like for me to be with these children. The love I have for them is something I have never experienced and for the first time I truly know what it’s like to love someone more than life itself. I have no idea what I will do without them and only heaven can help me when I get on that plane headed back “home”. Milagros, Esperanza, y Alegria. There is no better way to explain this experience.
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