Kids4Peace

My dad once explained to me that fatherhood is a quiet surrender to your greatest yet-to-be. For me that surrender has been more than a notion; it has changed me forever in ways I never would have expected. I've never been afraid of change. I actually consider myself to be a bit of an anarchist, with revolutionary ideas that invite change like pennies into a wishing well. However, I've learned that that type of change is calculated and manipulative, whereas fatherhood is organic, unpredictable, and scary.

Marriage and relationships are the same way. Change always comes when I'm not ready. It tears apart the fiber of my being for the sake of introducing me to something completely foreign. It's like the fire that clears away thousands of trees that have a history as old as the landscape they grow on, all for the sake of a single seed that may or may not grow.

As unpredictable as fatherhood and marriage are, I felt I needed both to truly have either one. I grew up in a two-parent home, so fatherhood and marriage were synonymous to me. When I got married five years ago, I knew that fatherhood was on the horizon. It excited me to envision that family. What would my children be like? Could I be a father worthy of shaping their potential?

I have been a father now for six months. My daughter, Miranda, is twenty-two years old. This is not the family I imagined, not ever.

For the past eight years I have volunteered and worked at a program that I co-founded called Peace4Kids. We serve foster youth predominantly, with the goal of creating a sustainable and consistent community that will assist them in becoming self-sufficient adults. That's really a lot of words that simply mean that we are an extended family for kids. Miranda came to us about eight years ago when she was 14 years old. She was the oldest child in the program at that point and she had the attitude to match.

I remember walking up to Miranda on that first day and introducing myself. She gave me a look that reminded me that I had skin, and that I might want to crawl out of it. She rolled her eyes when I asked her her name, and from that moment on I was invisible to her. I walked away hoping that this would be the last time I saw her. It wasn't. She came back week after week and each time I got the same response.

My routine at the program was consistent. I would open the day with a morning meeting where I told the kids what activities we'd be doing. Miranda always sat on a bench under a tree. She listened intently, but she never made eye contact with me. When the activities started, I'd ask Miranda if she would like to join us. She was rarely interested in what we were doing, so I'd tell her that whenever she wanted to talk, I would be ready to listen. Most of the time, though, she just sat on that same bench and talked to the other kids. With her peers she was animated and full of life, but on the few occasions she participated in the activities she was somber and distant. After a couple of months of trying to get her involved, I gave up. She had her space at the program and I had mine.

And then one day I found Miranda standing right next to me. She said, "You know why I like you?" Like me? I couldn't even believe that she was starting a conversation with me. "I like you because you never made me do what I don't want to do. Everybody expects that foster kids will do what you tell them to because we don't have a family and we need other people to love us and help us live. Well, I get to make choices too and I want people to respect that." I nodded in agreement and smiled at her with a rare joy.

That day Miranda and I hung out together. We talked about life and she told me about some of the horrors she faced growing up in foster care. Although the stories were full of pain, her voice had so much passion that she sounded like she was singing a cappella.

The day ended and we said goodbye. I watched Miranda get into the van with some of the other kids. As they drove off I felt a deep sadness. It wasn't because of all of the things that Miranda had shared with me; I was mourning my own life. I sensed that I would never be the same. Miranda had exposed my deepest flaw.

I had spent most of my life not being deeply connected to other people. My father is a revolutionary-turned-minister. He has an uncanny ability to make himself available to people without being affected by their stories. He seems to serve as the magical canvas. People throw their paint at him and when they step back they are able to gain new perspective on their lives. But none of the paint soaks in. His canvas remains blank. I saw the value in this, and I adopted it without truly knowing that I had done it. It never occurred to me that it cost him anything. That by remaining removed, he lost the opportunity to be genuinely moved by their stories, to connect with them. Miranda moved me.

That evolution was already taking place in me when I met Salam, the woman who became my wife. When we married we were both 26 years old. Even though we had a desire for family we decided to wait. We'd have children when we had a greater direction in our careers and were more financially sound. I thought I would be working in the film industry and that Peace4Kids would be my volunteer service life. I had no idea it would become my career.

Meanwhile, Miranda was about to graduate from high school, an incredible feat for many foster youth. She promised that she would still come to Peace4Kids every Saturday, but I was not naïve enough to believe it. I was right. Miranda came around a lot less.

Eventually months passed without hearing from her. I assumed that both she and I had outgrown each other. It was painful to realize that my priorities had changed. I was still connected to Peace4Kids, but I was trying to build a foundation for my own family, and volunteering at the program took on a less important role.

Then came the frantic call from Miranda's social worker. Miranda had been kicked out of her transitional living program and no one knew where she was. I panicked. Was she in prison, was she prostituting or, worse, had she been killed? I called all the Peace4Kids volunteers who knew her, and like a team of private investigators, we searched the streets for her. A month passed with no success.

And then I got a phone call. Miranda had been found. She was okay, but had been homeless for the past couple of months. She'd crashed on couches, in cars and occasionally she'd spent the night on the Metro train. I was happy that she was okay but I was furious with myself. I couldn't believe I had rested on the assumption everything would be all right, and sent Miranda into the world without any support. My wife read my anger with clarity and she called me out on it. "What did you expect to happen? If you are not fully committed to something the results you get will not be fully realized." She was right.

I decided to move into working at Peace4Kids full-time and soon it became the joy of my day. Miranda returned to the fold. She was coming every Saturday again. She was able to get into another transitional living program. She got a job. She also began to speak publicly about how Peace4Kids had saved her life, and suddenly people began to understand what were about. We had over 60 volunteers and over 120 kids involved in our programs. For the first time I was experiencing manhood in a way that was uniquely my own. Peace4Kids was birthed out of an idea that I had, and it had an incredible life.

By committing to Peace4Kids, I was beginning to shed the emotional distance I had spent my life cultivating. For the first time, the "patient perfectionist" in me had stepped aside and allowed real emotion to guide me.

I stepped up my efforts and invested more energy into making Peace4Kids flourish. Miranda stood right along side me and was an incredible advocate for the program. We were meeting with a group of Nissan executives, when I noticed Miranda talking to a woman across the room. As I approached, I heard her say something that tore me open again. "I went through my life never trusting any man I ever knew. But then I met Zaid and he taught me that I am worthy of having love and respect in my life."

At that moment I realized that Miranda was my child. There was no question or doubt in my heart, I was ready for fatherhood. But I could not do this without Salam. This wasn't the family we had envisioned when we married, and I would have understood had she told me she wasn't ready for it. Instead she surprised me by supporting it wholeheartedly.

Then, it was time to ask Miranda if she would be okay with me becoming her father. Miranda had been raised without her parents, so being a daughter was just as foreign to her as fatherhood was for me.

I took her out to dinner and cautiously entered the discussion. I explained that I felt a connection to her that I had never felt with another human being and that I knew it was because I was her father. She smiled, she gave me a big hug, and she cried. She said that now her life felt complete. We talked for hours, and she called me "Dad." It was the first time I had heard that word in reference to me. It was a little awkward for us both, but the feeling quickly dissipated. She told me she had always wanted to belong, to feel like she was a part of something bigger than herself. She explained that all her life she had been a foster kid in someone else's family in someone else's home and how that made her feel separate from everything. Not any more. Now, she is part of a family.

And together we are all part of a community. That's what Peace4Kids is. Community as family.

To read stories by 6 kids at Peace4Kids, click on the names below:

Richard Fuller
Deisy Rolon
Christopher Smith
Khalyssa Marshall
Trayvon Johnson
Lauryn Fuller

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