Bittersweet

“Ohhhhhh…Maateyos…Ohhhhhh….Maateyos…” Micah’s grieving the loss of a friend was as real as it comes. As we pulled into the airport parking lot, loaded Matthew’s stuff onto a cart, and placed him (Micah) on top for the ride to the first security checkpoint, everything seemed fine and dandy. But as soon as he heard the words, “Micah it’s time to say goodbye to Maateyos now,” he lost all composure. The tears streaming down his cheeks and the terribly sad frown he wore was enough to rip both Andrea’s and my hearts out of our chests. Little did we expect it would be this hard to say goodbye. After all, it had only been three months since Maateyos (aka. Matthew) arrived in Ethiopia as a summer intern through Wycliffe Canada. I had the eerie feeling that we had been set up for this misery! Hmmmm…and the more I thought about it, I think I have a legitimate case.

Don't trust that goofy smile, being an MK himself (ie. having grown up overseas), Matthew must have known what he was doing all along, a long, brilliantly-crafted plan to sabotage our emotions. Early on, he must have assessed each member of our family, so that he might specifically invest in just the areas that he knew would lead to ultimate hurt later on. For me, he purposefully engaged me in deep, intellectual conversations, not to mention taking what appeared to be an extremely genuine interest in the Gmz language and even spending hours upon hours pouring into the Gmz project with me! Incredibly deceptive yet pulled off without a hint of my suspicion. For Andrea, he always expressed thanks at every meal and helped a ton with things such as washing kids’ hands before meals and dishes afterward. He even managed to connect with Grace, who would often light up when he walked into the room! But, as we now see clearly, Matthew targeted most of his work on our little Micah, rightly assessing that if he could wrench his little heart, he would simultaneously crush ours as well. And so, looking back on his interactions with Micah, it is all too clear. Your average college student wouldn’t eagerly crawl into a three-year-olds cramped little forts in order to read aloud through the HUGE tower of books Micah had erected. Your average college student wouldn’t be down on the ground playing trains, up running around playing “I’m gonna gecha!”, or in the slower moments rock quietly with a three-year-old on his lap and watch evening cartoons before bed.

The average college student would not enter into the crazy world of pretend such as where Micah lives. They took turns being the fisherman and the fish (oh yes, and the ever popular strawberry fish), they flew in Papa’s airplane (ie. the couch), they rode the “motorcycle” to the “office” to “work”, they hunted and killed pretend snakes, etc, etc. Maateyos even tried to enter Micah’s world by making sense of his jibberish talk (which he talks in quite frequently) and by “interacting” with Micah’s imaginary friend, Sape. No college student in their right mind would go to such great lengths in befriending a three-year-old, that is unless he was harboring a devious scheme of heartbreak at the end.

And what a heartbreak it was! Micah whimpered/cried for about 20 minutes of the ride home from the airport, before falling asleep in his car seat. And with every round of “Ohhhhh…Maateyos…” our hearts too were throbbing the pain of loss. Having shared in our experiences, having shared in our laughs, Maateyos had successfully weaseled his way deep, deep into our family, but why? Does his sick mind revel in our suffering to say goodbye? Or could it possibly be that God used one of His servants to bless us, to enrich our lives simply for a time? And like all good things that must come to an end, that end is necessarily bittersweet.