The first meeting between a sad orphan girl and a poor homeless painter turned out to be the push they needed to turn their lives around. Find out how.
Christie was fed up with living in the orphanage and decided to run away. She had been living there since she was two years old. She was that age when her parents died in a car accident on their way to buy groceries.
Christie would have been with them in the car, but her aunt was around then. Hence, her parents left her at home with her aunt.
After Christie’s parents died, the authorities decided to send her to an orphanage until she became an adult. Her aunt, her only relative, was deemed unfit to raise her because of her past history with drug addiction.
Thus, little Christie began life at the orphanage. She missed her parents so much but knew she would never see them again.
The only memory she had of them was an old photo they took after giving birth to her. In the picture, Christie’s young parents smiled as they embraced each other while cuddling her outside the maternity home where she was born.
Christie had no friends. She was a private person as she had learned to keep to herself at all times. Hence, the other children in the orphanage avoided her because she always kept a straight face.
With no friends and no one to confide in, Christie felt she did not belong to the orphanage and plotted to run away. She longed to have a breath of fresh air and resolved to escape one night.
On that night, she packed some of her belongings and the little money she had saved over the years. She hid behind a cabinet before lights out and crept out of the door just before all the lights were turned off.
No one saw Christie as she walked out of the gates. She was surprised by this and felt she was destined to escape. Once she was out in the city streets, she walked with all the confidence she could muster for a 16-year-old.
Christie was walking past a bar when some hooligans surrounded her. One of them asked her what a young girl like her was doing outside alone at that time of the night.
They threatened to hurt her, but she pleaded that she did not want any troubles. However, Christie’s pleas fell on deaf ears as the hooligans dragged her to a dark corner and were about to have their way with her when a man interrupted them.
The man fought off the three hooligans and managed to overpower them. However, he sustained an injury on his head and was bleeding.
Once the hooligans were out of sight, Christie rushed to the man to see if he was okay. He was the first man she had ever been really worried about in her life.
She rushed to the nearest pharmacy and bought something to stop his bleeding. After the bleeding stopped, the man introduced himself to her.
“My name is Glen. I am a homeless man,” he said.
“I’m Christie, I ran away from the orphanage tonight,” Christie replied.
Glen went to a fast-food restaurant and bought hot dogs for him and Christie. While eating, they talked and learned more about each other.
Glen asked Christie what she dreamed of. She said she dreamed of meeting her parents and visiting Paris Disneyland with them.
“All my life, that’s all I imagine,” she added, showing him the only picture she had with her parents. Glen sighed and watched the photo she showed him intently.
When Christie asked him about his own dream, he told her his story. He used to be an artist many years ago. However, his wife kicked him out after a quarrel, making him homeless.
“Since then, I have been saving up some money for drawing and painting materials and to rent a small room where I could live and paint. But it has been an almost impossible task to accomplish,” he revealed.
As soon as Glen finished speaking, a police car pulled up where he and Christie were. They put Christie in the car and interrogated Glen for a while before letting him go.
The police officers took Christie back to the orphanage. She was sad to be going back there but happy with her experience that night.
When Christmas came, Christie did not join the other kids to have fun. Instead, she stayed alone in her room. Later, another girl entered the room and told to Christie someone had left a gift for her. The girl handed her the wrapped present and left.
“Who could have brought me a gift?” Christie wondered.
She opened the present and found a small painting inside it. It featured her hugging her parents near the entrance to Disneyland in Paris. The image closely resembled her picture with her parents at the maternity home, except that they were posing for a photographer, and the photographer was Glen, the homeless man she met on the day she ran away from the orphanage.
At the back of the painting, there was a note that Glen had left her. “I will not be able to realize my dream, but I tried to realize yours. Merry Christmas!” the note read.
Christie cried tears of joy. For the first time since her parents died, she was happy. “I visited Disneyland with my parents,” she whispered while smiling through tears.
The following day, Christie met with the orphanage director and told her about Glen and his gift to her. The director agreed to set up art lessons at the orphanage.
They invited Glen to be their art teacher and provided him with a workshop and a new home. Christie ran to him and hugged him tightly when he arrived for his first class.
“Dreams come true,” she said.
Glen taught Christie how to draw and paint, and she became very good at it. Within a year, she owned a collection of 20 beautiful paintings that she named, “Our Family Trips.” Finally, and through art, she could always have her parents with her.
What did we gain from this story?
Don’t let your circumstances define you. Never let the conditions you find yourself define you, no matter how unpleasant they may be. Glen was a homeless man but never gave up on his dream to have a home and do what he loved doing the most. He stayed on that dream, and it became a reality.
Make others happy if you can. Glen tried to put a smile on Christie’s face and without expecting it, it opened new doors for him. People should learn to be good to one another. That way, the world will be a better place.