Mercy's Pretend Play

When Faith was 6, I remember that she used to dress up in rags and pretend to be a poor girl who had no food. I actually remember writing a blog post about it, but when I looked back over my blog I could not find the specific blog post. I remember wondering how much she had changed from pretending to be a princess in America to a pauper in Lesotho.


Mercy is 6 and recently I have come to notice a theme in her pretend play just like I noticed in Faith's at her age. Mercy is always an orphan who has been abandoned or her parents have been killed. No matter if she is pretending to be a little girl or if she is pretending to be an animal, it is always an orphan. Today she asked me to help her write a story and here are a few parts of her story;

...I am a cheetah. My mother was hunting and my father was babysitting us. My father thought there were too many of us so he abandoned me. I was the weirdest. My ears were black...When it was winter, I was very cold and found a sock to crawl into. I knew is stinked, but at least I was warm...


The story continued on and although the cheetah was found and adopted, it was a bit of a sad story with only an okay ending, certainly not the happily ever after that my kids would have imagined had we stayed in our small town in Michigan and never seen Lesotho and real poverty and real problems. Although the psychologist in me thinks this is a healthy way to process all that she has seen and heard, the mother in me wants to protect her a little more. I do thank God that we are here though because Mercy has a beautiful compassionate heart that adores the little babies at Beautiful Gate and I admire her merciful heart for the orphan.