Sometimes
the need in front of me is so great I can hardly keep it together.
It’s
deep in the center of your gut; it’s like all the feelings and emotions and
hope and despair are turning your insides into jello. Your jaw clenches as if
that will hold the tears behind your eyes instead of letting them escape into
being seen. The weight of need presses
on your chest; you can feel your heart aching and your breath comes in little gasps
and you fight with all you are to not let your face reveal the chaos going on
inside. The smile must remain; the
looking, the eye-to-eye contact without flinching or turning away or letting
anyone see what the chaos of seeing injustice and despair and hopelessness at
the same time as seeing resilience and hope and joy does to you.
I’m
no stranger to need, to poverty, to going without, to hospital conditions that
make my stomach retch and my blood boil.
Seeing those things a hundred times doesn’t make the one hundred and
first time any easier. I’m glad of this;
I never want to become one of those hardened aid workers that is unaffected by the
reality they live in, so I can say as painful as it is I am glad I can feel because it means I am alive.
But
it doesn’t make it easier either. As I
reflect on the last few weeks, on visits and people and places, I feel the
weight of need… and honestly, I don’t get it.
I don’t get how God can see that kind of thing every single minute of
every single day and not do something about it.
I don’t have the answers and I can’t explain it. And I also don’t have to get it. But I do know
that he knows, he feels every emotion
that I feel and he sees every need and knows the number of hairs on every head
of every person I met and treasures every tear I cry for that place and those
people.
What
we do feels like a tiny drop in a really big bucket. It is. But the thing I continually need to
remind myself of, with all my tears and hopes and power and courage and
strength, is the unfailing truth that eventually, no matter the size of the
bucket, enough drops will eventually fill
it.
And the sun rises on a new day.
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