Around 4 or 5 years ago, I was
coming out of a place where my business had failed, I was ragged and generally
felt like I was just part of the system. My amazing wife, Nicki was super
supportive, things were beginning to turn around and there was light at the end
of the tunnel. I had been travelling to China too often and for to long, we had just
had a premature baby son just a couple of years before and at the time my
eldest son Graydon was just 7 or 8 years old. I had not been a great father,
spent a lot of time away on business and at my office. So in an effort to
re-connect with my son and spend more time with him, I started coaching
football at the local club, it was challenging but mostly loads of fun, Gray
and I got to spend more time with each other.
Although, I had been going to
“church” most of my life, I remember going to Sunday school, to youth and
confirmation classes, but, I never knew God, my only reference to being a
Christian was what I filled in under religion on a job app, it didn’t bother me
that in the previous 20 years I had only physically stepped into a church of
whatever description to attend weddings and funerals, and as a family we just
didn’t get there… Financially my life was bleak, but spiritually it was
completely barren.
Getting back to Gray, he progressed
into a nice little player and so I continued to coach at the club. I was coaching a game a football, my
under 8 team played against a team that was made of players from an
orphanage... in stark contrast to "my" team, came from the relative
middle class suburbs, we could make up a rainbow nation team, we had blacks,
whites, coloreds & Indians, we had Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Christians,
I think we even had a Krishna kid. All our kids had new boots, branded from
Puma thru Nike, they had practice gear from every team from Liverpool to MU to
Chelsea, knee guards and water bottles, in short, and they were sorted. On the
other hand, these ‘other’ kids, these kids from the orphanage had very little
and what they did have was so "handed-down"
that it was on the verge of falling apart it was so threadbare... this however
didn't seem to bother these kids & although they lost the game, at full
time it was some ridiculous score of 25-0, even our goalie scored twice, these
‘other’ kids, they played with the biggest heart and the biggest smiles I have
ever seen in my life.
That game broke my heart... and changed my life forever. Even though on that day I wasn't a Christian, I said a quiet prayer, but, I never fully realised how that single game or that prayer would impact and shape the rest my life... it sounds crazy, but it seems that God was listening that day...
Over a period of time we got involved with a couple of orphanages, we met some amazing people, but we did this from an easy, almost comfortable distance, reaching out when it suited us, when we were comfortable, when there was a need, from our side or theirs... I say this, because everything that we did in that period, all the good work and deeds we did, was done in such a way that it didn’t take us out of our comfort zones. We started asking questions and some of the answers didn't sit too well, made us feel uneasy, we thought "others" had this under control, clearly no-one had this thing under control...
And then we started dreaming, my Nicki was dreaming of little nunu's, the cute and cuddlies running and crawling around our house, honestly, it scared the breath out of me, that wasn’t part of my dream, it wasn’t part of how “I” wanted to help, I didn't have that dream, it had passed me by in the night and my heart was stirring for something else, I wasn’t sure what it was at the time...
We started exploring the concept
of church and God again, this time as a family. My youngest son Ashton, has
started at a church run pre-school, I guess the first thing that I encountered
that was different was that the majority of the parents actually greeted us and
seemed genuinely keen to get to know us. While this was an encouragement, I
didn’t want to get involved with anything that wasn’t real and wasn’t going to
impact directly on our lives.
We started seeing more and more
street children at traffic lights... some with the biggest smiles, some with
the biggest tears... and yes some with "performances" worthy of
Oscars... We started asking names
and ages, we started to touch hands and receiving the most precious gift of
nothing more than smiles. More questions came, again the answers, hurt as much
as seeing our own children standing there in the very places that these kids
occupied... During this time both the dreaming & the searching for the real
God continued, we had at this time made a commitment to a church where we felt
comfortable, but we were still skeptical of this mystery God, the 3-in-one.
Last in and first out was our every other Sunday routine, we weren’t stupid, we
were not going to get sucked into anything that was a bit “freaky”. Meanwhile,
we saw more and more kids at the lights, we started identifying small
communities of children looking after children, we knew which were “good” and
which were “bad”, we did allot of seeing! The more we saw, the more frustrating
it was, we saw the desperation, the addiction, the prostitution, it was pretty
much everywhere. One day Ashton who was around 5 or so asked my why these
children kept asking for stuff – he couldn’t understand why they weren’t at
home with their mums and dads – I drove home and cried silently… I remember feeling really angry, that deep anger that comes from that hidden place we all
harbor, but feeling helpless at the same time.
We carried on dreaming, just
trying to make small differences, mainly with love, sometimes with food and the
every now and again a parcel of clothing or a pair of running shoes, always to
our favorite kids… there it was again, that little niggle on performance, good
looking, not so good looking, good act, bad act, good day, bad day… it started
bothering me.
I thought I wasn’t naïve, I knew
we couldn’t help everyone and we saw that there was a desperate need for older
kids, the ones that aren't cute and cuddly, the ones that had already been left
behind, they needed love too, the ones hanging onto dreams that were never
going to materialise.
Hope eventually gave birth to a thought, that thought became our own dream and that of others, we called it SMLV+18, this dream was for orphans over the age of 18, where we would be able to Rescue, Restore and Release dreams and dreamers, so many years later, I sit here writing this post, tears streaming down my face as I recall the memory of those poor, broken children playing a game of soccer & that prayer, "God, if You are really, really real, I want You to show me Your heart, my heart to break for the same things that break yours, I want you to show us how to be part of the solution"
Yesterday, one our boys, Lucky had his dream restored, he registered at UKZN to study Architecture, go out there my boy, go out there with purpose, go out there and CHANGE THE WORLD...
