Sentimientos Encontrados * Some Things Echo Into Eternity

I think the wisdom of aging is that you realize what truly matters. Cliche perhaps, but it’s true - each year I learn a little more, the realization settles a little bit deeper into my bones - that investments in people are the only thing that changes people. Resources and policies and systems - these are great (and I’ve not given in on the careful re-design, advocacy, & leveraging of them)… but grassroots investments into people, well, these are the things that echo into eternity.

When I was 14 I met a little boy named Jayson. He was so spicy and Dennis the Menace-ey and so much like me… stubborn, strong, resilient. He had been through so much and yet every word out of his mouth was power and life.

I loved him instantly. And so did my mom. All I did was show her a photo and share my story of him, and she was sold. She jumped in full send on this little boy - thousands of miles away - sponsoring him, traveling to spend time with him, writing to him, praying for him, chatting on the phone with him.

He aged: from 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 to 25, and she was there for it all: advocating for him, investing in his education, cheering him on, live streaming his graduations, throwing fundraisers for his new nonprofit, live streaming his wedding, crying each time she had to say goodbye to him in person, showing everyone photos of his new baby, sharing widely the coffee beans that came from his farm… she was there for it all — the big life achievements and the small moments — the times that he just needed spoken into and reminded that he was loved. She called him “her other son” and she meant it. She viewed loving and investing in Jayson as one of the greatest privileges of her life.

When she was dying, he scrambled to get on a plane to see her. They held each other for the last time just weeks before she died. She was still digging out chili from the back of her fridge to feed him, and he was flipping through his phone to share the most recent photos of his daughter.

I couldn’t stay for long during that last visit. The realization that this was it, that this was the final time that they would be together, was a big, heavy knot in my tired and hurting soul. I couldn’t watch them say goodbye to each other. I wouldn’t have been able to keep soldiering through with caregiving. So, I left. I left them in intimacy and love as they held each other as U.S. mom and Honduran son one last time.

Flash forward to two weeks ago :: my brother & I flew Jayson here for one final gift from my mom, an investment she wanted to remain unknown until after she had passed. In her dying arrangements, she arranged for one final gift of financial blessing for Jayson and his young family.

We got to give it to him. We gathered family and friends and through trembling words and big tears, we gave him that last gift.

But what I witnessed in that room that day is the magic of it all:

The financial gift wasn’t actually mom’s last gift. The final gift was the people who huddled around Jayson and hugged him and loved on him and spoke life into him. He’s 29 and a whole grown man now, with a family of his own, a masters degree, a full time job, and the leadership of a nonprofit he founded. But all of that good doesn’t change his need for people :: we all desperately need people.

And on that Sunday afternoon, in my brother’s living room, the next iteration of my mom’s love for Jayson was born … in her people for her Honduran son.

Investments into people reverberate in time. Death doesn’t end them, sickness doesn’t end them, war doesn’t end them… when we deposit love into someone and stick our own neck out on the line for them, things are changed for all of time. We are changed, those around us are changed, the recipient is changed, and those around the recipient are changed. We begin a cascade that I don’t think stops or can be mapped over time or measured in butterflying influence.

The investment of love into people cascades through time :: a waterfall of effortless beauty and power, defying even our best theories of change.

I am changed forever because of a 40 year old woman who said yes to a child she didn’t know 3,000 miles away.

23 years and so much love later, a waterfall rages powerfully.

Last Sunday as I was interpreting for Jayson at a church where he was sharing his nonprofit’s mission, I took a big, long exhale.

She’s not here, but love carries on.

And it’s impact is boundless.

[To contribute to Jayson’s mission to help children in the mountain villages of Honduras, email montanadeninos@gmail.com. And if you’d like to spend time with Jayson and serve his ministry directly in Honduras, then contact me at hello@katiecastro.org. I’m organizing a trip for Summer 2025 and would love for you to be part of it.]