Baby Rick

This is Baby Rick. He's not really a baby anymore, but we can't quite get it out of our system and stop calling him that. In fact, he answers more to just plain "baby" than he does to "Rick." That will have to change before he goes to school. He's three now. Big Rick and I were there at the hospital the day baby Rick's Mom, Halima, gave birth. I was with her all through the delivery and Rick was waiting right outside the door, so we've known Baby Rick since the moment of his arrival. The first American in his family. The only child in more than a decade to be born outside a refugee camp.

I love Baby Rick and his brother, Musa, and sister, Dollar, in a way I didn't know you could love a child that wasn't your own. I feel like there's an invisible string connecting my heart to them. And if they needed me, I would do anything for them. I would turn my life upside down to make sure they were okay. When I visited Africa this past summer, I saw Rick, Dollar, and Musa in the faces of every child on the street. Every child without shoes or clean clothes. Every child that was hungry. And I was reminded over and over again that it is only by the grace of God that they are not still living in the sqalid camp in Kenya where their family lived for twelve years before they got out. A camp where children regularly don't make it to their fifth birthday. And the thought of those beautiful kids living like that shakes me. It's what wakes me up again when I start to push thoughts of Africa away. Nobody should live like the kids in Kibera are living. Or the kids in Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps. I am ashamed as I sit in comfort writing his blog while kids just like Baby Rick are suffering and dying for no reason except greed an the failure of the body of Christ to make good on our own declared beliefs and promises.