I knew when I stepped in the Pioneer Theater in downtown Manteo tonight that I would be watching a very well done movie about a rich white family and a poor black kid. I knew I would cry. I did not know that I would prehaps be crying for a different reason than all of the other people in the sold out seats around me. I did not know that I would be crying for the orphaned and abandoned children of Haiti.
When I was in high school I wrote an essay about adoption and how I wanted to adopt 6kids from all different backgrounds and races and raise them as a color blind family. I did not realize that dream in my life.
The day that I first saw Nico's photo which was taken in an orphanage in Haiti,I bonded with him. I feel in love with him on the spot just as much as if he had been born to my daughter. What I didn't know was that this was just a beginning. My dream for a color blind family would become a reality after all.
The movie The Blind Side beautifully illustrated the power of family. Family is not just mother,father, brother, sister. Family is a God given calling on our lives to be bonded together with others in a safe and loving atmosphere where we know we belong and are loved.
Families have traditions and stories, songs and activities and faith that define them as family. These things create bonds that knit us together in a way that organizations and social groups can not. Families create a place for us to vent our emotions weather good or bad.We can be silly.We test the water with people who will still love us at the end of the day even if we have been a jerk. Family will look for us when we run away/turn away/fade away and will always want us back. Families have our "blind side". We protect each other from the things that would try to hurt us and are ready to defend each other even if it means we will be hurt in the process.
I remember as a child being angry with my uncle for taking my brother's bebe gun away after he SHOT ME! And when he SHOT ME with a hunting arrow I covered for him so he would not get in trouble. (I know..I took it a little far :)
Big Mike (Michael Oars) in the movie was not motivated by anything his high school coach had to say to him. He was motivated by the words of the woman who loved him with a mother's love. This unlikely realationship created by not only a woman who allowed herself to love and trust this young man but also by a young man who allowed himself to trust and love her. At one point in the movie a friend says something to the effect of "You are changing this boy's life so much." to which Sandra Bullock says "No, he is changing my life so much."
Many, many times I have heard people say to me how wonderful my daughter is to give up everything and move to Haiti to run an orphanage. While it is true even to me that it is a pretty amazing thing to do, Gwenn is the first to say with sincerity that she is getting far more than she gives up.
Tonight as I watched this movie I thought of Jerry. I wish like "Big Mike" that Jerry would have been able to "close his eyes" when bad things were happening so as not to see them. He could not close his eyes and he as well as his Haitian brothers and sisters have seen far to much for their tender years. But there is redemption and his story does not have to end sadly. In time and with God's grace and with the love of a family that will be there, in time, in time this 9 yr. old child will know that someone has his back and his "blind side". For now the stripes on his back from the cruel whip that taught him to distrust are still too fresh. But as those scars fade and as he learns to trust that the hand that feeds him is also the hand that tucks him in at night, in time..in time he will not only know whose got his back and in time he will learn that he in fact is home.Home with a family who loves him.
To read more about Jerry and his family go to mangine.org
