"I can't go back"

After one week at home, he told me that he could never leave.  

“Aunt Mallory, I’m going to finish school. I don’t care if I don’t know the alphabet right now. I’m going to finish school, and even university. Then I’m going to get work. I’m going to be a pilot. I’m never going back to Kisenye (the slum where he lived as a street child). Never. I knew it would be hard to come to a home. I knew it would hurt me and make me sick to leave my drugs, but I am a bad boy when I am in Kisenye. Nobody wants a bad boy. I knew if I ever got a chance to be in a home that I could never leave because if I go back to Kisenye then I’ll be a bad boy again and I may never get another chance. I can’t go back. I’ll never go back.” 

A year and a half ago, he made me promise that if I ever brought him into our home, that I would be the one to come and pick him up from the streets. Last Saturday, I ventured down to Kisenye looking for him. He was a high risk child. Still doing drugs, still chasing people with razor blades, and still creating havoc. God was still saying “Bring my child home.” 

I knew that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, because he always did. I walked into the middle of the slum and the crowd of street kids started to gather around me, and I politely talked to them, while I kept my eyes out for the him. He came up to the outskirts of the crowd, and through the shouting, grabbing, and playing of the twenty or so children around me, I looked at him and said “Are you ready?”  He nodded. We turned around and walked away. 

Once we’d walked away from the group, he quietly asked me, “Are we going home?” And I nodded and said yes. Again and again he asked me as we walked to the market, and it wasn’t until I pulled out my money and bought him that first pair of shoes that he looked at me with tears in his eyes and a smile bigger than anybody has ever seen and he agreed, “I’m going home!!!” 

He had lived on the streets for at least three years. Passing through the crowded market his friends working the stalls called out to him 

“Don’t let the drugs bring you back here!”  

“If she takes you home, you stick!” 

“We don’t want to see you again!” 

I was astonished at the amount of people that came up to me with smiles, tears, or shock; and they shook my hand. 

“Thank you for taking him. Thank you.” 

He smiled at me and said, “ I have many friends.” 

Frankly, I was more worried about the boys that were already in the home as he came home, than I was about him. Unfortunately, many of them had been his victims. However, when we pulled the car into the house, he was greeted with shouts, cheers, jumping up and down, as they chanted his name. 

And I’m pretty sure that the same sound was roaring from heaven. 

He made it through the withdrawal. I’d never seen him sober. He amazes me every day. 

He is home.