A Purpose

Why am I here? I sit on my bed and stare at my walls. My perfectly white spotless walls. Safe. Warm. Comfortable. I have mentioned roofs, or the lack thereof, but I had never thought of lack of walls. Many people, many families, many children, do not even have walls to surround them as they sleep. Can you imagine living like this? You lay down to sleep. Your floor is dirt and if you're lucky you'll have a sheet or possibly a tarp underneath you. It's midnight and the wind is blowing. You curl up close to your family as tightly as you can. The rain begins. The rain seeps through your makeshift roof and, due to lack of walls, drenches you and your family. The rain has soaked all of you leaving you and your children shivering. The rain rushes down the mountainside and underneath you. You're forced to squat for hours. Your legs are sore and you're cold and wet. How long until the morning? You hope the sun will shine so you can dry your things. Rain falls for days. No sleep. No shelter. No food.

Now, wake up and look around you. You're reading this off of a screen somewhere safe and surrounded by the comfort of walls, a roof and dry clothes. I should know. I'm doing the same. Putting ourselves in the shoes of so many around the world is hard. It's not fun to think of the suffering. It's not easy to think of others pain because we feel guilty. It's is essentially what drives us to do what we do. So, I encourage you, be driven.

"Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed." -- Psalm 82:3

Remember that this is not an elaborate story made up to force you into donating. This is life. Real life. This is the true story of a family I know and so many others living in these conditions. They don't have the choice to come back to the states like I do. Like you do. So, let us not forget the Haitians. Let us not forget. Please.

I finally understand how all of you feel and it truly makes me appreciate all you have done for Haiti so much more. The individual donations and he fundraisers. I feel so useless here. I feel out of place. I feel alone. It's not as glorious as being in Haiti with the Haitians. Holding their hands. Watching every penny you donated change lives. You never got to smell those smells and hold those hands and yet you have continued to give. THAT is heroic. You are the silent heroes that no one sees but have changed lives. God sees you. The Haitians feel what you have given. Thank you. We are not there but we can continue to do what we can with the time that we have. Right here. Right now. One of my wonderful friends Marcy sent this to me today and I believe it's perfect.

"Just think, you're not here by chance but by God's choosing. His hand formed you and made you the person you are. He compares you to no one else. You lack nothing that His grace can't give you. He has allowed you to be here at this time in history, to fulfill His special purpose for this generation." -- Roy Lessin