Cutie Pie

I have eight younger siblings. When I am back home I will often have an occasional wrestling with one, two, three, four, and if things get really intense big papa will step into the ring with us. During the duration of the match I will usually allow them to pin me to the ground and be body slammed a few times before I pull out my Hulk like strength and then flip the tables around. Also I will often flash back to my high school football days and tackle (gently of course) my younger siblings to the ground. After that I may decide to throw a few on the couch or pick them up on my back and fall backwards onto them (again gently). Our matches usually end when I go too far on accident and make somebody cry, which in most case is Simon because he just won’t say mercy.
 
            Now I am not telling you to about these matches to show off my Samson like strength or prove that I am the dominant wrestler in my family. Rather I want you to reread that description and notice all the physical touch and affection there is in it. If you were too lazy to reread it like I would be it I’ll just let you know it is packed to brim. Until this trip I never realized how much I enjoyed a good old wrestling session, my parents’ hugs, my mom’s back scratches, or any other small form of physical affection. Now being three months into this trip I am starting to miss it all… a lot.
 
            When I began feeling this way I didn’t know what to do. I mean if I just went up and hugged the other guy on team for ten minutes straight and then asked him to scratch my back he might start to question some things and if I did that to the girls I would be sent home. So I did the only thing I really could do; tell God about it.
           
            Now while I have been here I have been learning that when you ask for something and He wants to answer your request it most likely is going to be in some weird and crazy way that you never expected. When I presented my request to God and all I said was “God I just want a hug right now.” Nothing more or less and I was thinking that maybe a teammate would walk in and hug me or something cool like that but, God decided to answer it a touch differently.
 
            This past Saturday night I was washing dishes and felt as though I was not alone in the kitchen. I turned around and found my hunch to be correct as Moon was sitting on a stool waiting for me to finish. Moon is a little Asian girl that stands no taller then my hip and was a smile that could melt the heart of a biker in Hells Angels. She is one of the twenty girls that stays at the house that I am living at and has worked her way to be one of my favorites.

              It didn’t take too long and I was finished with my dishes. Once I was done Moon was quick to run over and hold my hand. Now I have no idea what it is like to have your own child come running up to you just so they can hold your hand, but I am going to guess it feels something like what I experienced that night. We had a nice dance session before Moon snuck off inside to watch a movie with the other girls. I stayed talking to one of my family members for a while. When I finished talking, I noticed Moon standing at the screen door pressing her face against it. I walked over, knelt down and then pressed me cheek against the screen to copy my little friend. Then without warning shortly after my cheek pressed against the thin metal it was pecked with a little kiss from Moon. She then pulled back, smiled at me and then ran into the living room again.
            In the moment all I could think about was how adorable and cute the whole thing was but when I revisited it later some thing else was shown. That whole scene was a small answer to prayer that I had asked God for just a day or so ago. What seemed small and almost insignificant act at the time was really a moment the great conductor had planned all along. He planned to show me a little bit of comforting embrace through a small adorable girl in one simple display of affection for her new giant foreign friend. 
            The realization of the bigger picture made me wonder; “What small insignificant thing have I done that was part of a bigger picture?” Or the flip side of that “What little nudge from God did I ignore because I thought it wouldn’t make a difference or didn’t seem worth doing at the time that was supposed to be from God and maybe change that person’s day?” Each of these are kind of hard to think about because I don’t really notice all the little things I do or don’t do. However, thanks to Moon I am starting to realize the little things can have a lot bigger affect then I think.