Sonrise Magazine

How God Used A Man And A Simple Toy To Reach Children Around The World:

By Michael Lee

“Baby In The Cradle” Drawing By Raisa Estrada

Can any good thing come from one solitary life born under dubious circumstances? There was a time in my life when everything I thought I knew about myself was suspect and I needed to know if my life mattered.

My parents were 18 years old when they got married in the early 1960s. My dad enlisted in the Marines and fought in Vietnam. Six years into their tumultuous marriage, I was born. Two years later, my brother came along. The family experience was chaotic. Under our roof, I had a front row seat to alcoholism, violence, and abuse. It was not a safe place for hearts or bodies. I grew up confused and programmed for a life of cynicism.

My circumstances improved during the last semester of my senior year in high school. Through the influence of some Christian classmates, I found myself at a Sunday night church service, and when an invitation was given to acknowledge the claims of Jesus Christ as Lord, I found the faith in my heart to say yes.

A new life path opened to me full of promise and purpose. I attended a small Christian University for college. After four transformative years, I spent the first year after graduation doing inner-city ministry. I landed my first career job shortly after that. By most standards for twenty-somethings, I was adulting well.

Before my 30^th birthday, I was having a conversation with my dad, when he casually dropped a family secret that exploded in my heart like a grenade in a fox hole. I already knew my parents were essentially kids when they got married, but I did not know that my dad married my mother because she told him she was pregnant.

A thousand questions leaped into my dizzy brain. Why was he telling me this now? What happened to the baby? Did my dad love my mother? Did he feel trapped? Is this the reason he was so abusive to his family? Were my brother and I even wanted?

His answer to the question, what happened to the baby, surprised me. He didn’t know. All he could say is that one day she told him she was pregnant, but after they got married, she suddenly wasn’t pregnant anymore. He didn’t know the answer because they never spoke about it again after the wedding. This only raised more questions.

Whether the answer to the riddle was miscarriage, abortion, or a lie, it did not spare me from the fear that my life did not matter. I was convinced that I was a mistake, the product of a union that was never meant to be. All the heartache from my upbringing suddenly made sense. The self-hatred and anger towards my parents blinded me.

During this time, I was being mentored by a leader at my church and shared the news at our next meeting. He listened patiently. In time, through prayer, scripture, and many conversations, I began to see the possibility that I was not just born by the will of a man, but by the will of the God who knew me before all time and eternity, the God who can cause all things to work together for good regardless of one’s origin.

While I was wrestling with this family revelation, I was working long hours, week after week, in my professional life. I was employed at a fledgling startup company as a public speaker. I presented a 45-minute motivational show in 300-400 elementary schools a year. I traveled over 60% of the time.  The schedule was exhausting, but the work filled my soul. I made my living encouraging children every day.

After college, I did not go looking for a job as a motivational speaker. This job found me. During my four years in school, I worked part time for a toy company doing yoyo promotions at toy stores. I was not a yoyo expert as a child. The toy company trained me and a small team of college students to learn yoyo tricks and teach kids.

The yoyo gig was a fun job I thought I would leave behind in college but then the most unexpected thing happened. A former executive from the toy company tracked me down and shared his idea to start a new company, taking yoyos directly to the schools through assemblies. I was happy to join the adventure.

I was on a quest to perform in all 50 US States. It was my seventh year at the company and the booking manager called to plan a future tour. In passing, she mentioned that by the end of the school year I would reach the one million kid milestone for children seen in my school assemblies. Was it possible that someone with my background could make an impact on the lives of so many kids?

Early the next morning, during my quiet time, the Holy Spirit reminded me about an encounter I experienced with Him when I was an inner-city missionary in Los Angeles. I had not thought about this memory in years.

One week, our inner-city team took a group of neighborhood kids to a Christian camp in the mountains. On the last day, after everyone was asleep, I slipped out of the cabin and tiptoed up to the prayer chapel. What happened next astonished me.

Whether I fell asleep or had a waking vision, I don’t know, but this is what I saw in the Spirit. I was a spectator, looking at myself as a toddler. Little Michael was wandering aimlessly, wearing only a diaper. He was crying in despair with his hands raised. There was blood oozing from his broken heart.

Into the grief, Jesus appeared. He walked over to my toddler self, picked me up, and cradled me in his arms. I was overwhelmed by the peace that passes all understanding. I lost track of time. Eventually, he set me down, and I stood by his side, holding his hand. There was a scar on my chest over my heart.

After a while, I began to hear faint voices weeping in the distance that grew louder and louder. When I looked up, it appeared as if Jesus and I were in the center of a transparent globe and everywhere I looked… up, down, left, right, back, front, all I could see were hundreds of thousands of children like me, all over the world, wandering aimlessly without hope.

My toddler-self glanced up at Jesus with an inquisitive expression as if to say, what does this mean? Jesus gazed at me, and then, with a nod of intent and a smile in his eyes he pointed to the children. In that moment I received a revelation; The scar on my heart prepared me to minister to the children. I was on mission with Jesus to reach them. As I began to walk towards the children, the vision ended, and I found myself sitting in the front row of the small mountain prayer chapel. I wrote the encounter down in my journal and scurried back to the cabin. I told nobody and forgot all about it after a while.

“Healed Heart” Watercolor By Amy J Heath

The Lord did not forget. At just the right time, when I was questioning my very birth, He revealed to me that my job as a speaker was the fulfillment of that vision. My presentations were a ministry with Jesus to touch the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. By the time I left that company, my audience count stood at over 1.7 million children in all 50 US States, four continents, and three trips to the Whitehouse in Washington DC.

God had a vision for my life that was so much greater than anything I could dream on my own. As the apostle Paul says, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, Amen.” Eph 3:20-21

Today, I am persuaded by the love of God in Christ Jesus that my life matters. And although I am no longer on literal stages every day, I still get to share the light and love of the Lord Jesus with people who matter to God. No life is a mistake, no family history is beyond redemption. As for my parents, they both found Jesus later in life and earlier this year, they celebrated their 60^th wedding anniversary. I am thankful for them.

With God all things are possible. It starts with a relationship with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit and then we follow Him on the adventure he chooses to share with us. Sometimes that adventure includes a yoyo.