Broken. My
word of the day today is broken. Yesterday before we left for Cite Soleil
(one of the poorest slums in the western hemisphere), Jeff Gacek told us that
God was going to break our hearts into a million little pieces, but that God always puts our broken
hearts back together and that if we allow Him, He will reshape our broken
hearts to the form that He wants them to be. Yesterday my heart was
ripped wide open.
At one of our water truck stops, I picked up a sweet little boy with just a ragged, dirty onesie on (no diaper) and I held this little boy as we walked through the streets of a city that you have to see up close to believe. When it was time to leave I tried to give my new little friend back to his mother, but when I let go of him, he cried and cried and reached and grabbed for me as his mother tried to restrain him and hold onto him.
It was heartbreaking...heartbreaking to know that the love I gave to this little boy was probably the most love and attention he would receive for the day. Most of the little ones just wander around the streets with no one playing with them, no one paying attention to them or showing them much love. So different from the way we live here, where we watch over our little ones and pick them up the moment they begin to cry.
The hardest part of Haiti is
leaving…leaving these sweet little children who so desperately want to come
with us. Leaving and wondering if they’ll
make it, and if they do, what their life will look like as they grow up. But as Jeff Moen reminded us this morning,
our job isn’t to ask “why”. God doesn’t
want us to try to figure it all out, that was not His purpose by showing us
this part of the world unseen by so many…all He asks us to do is respond. Respond with a hug, respond with a prayer,
respond with a smile, respond with a song, respond with love…
At one of our water truck stops, I picked up a sweet little boy with just a ragged, dirty onesie on (no diaper) and I held this little boy as we walked through the streets of a city that you have to see up close to believe. When it was time to leave I tried to give my new little friend back to his mother, but when I let go of him, he cried and cried and reached and grabbed for me as his mother tried to restrain him and hold onto him.
It was heartbreaking...heartbreaking to know that the love I gave to this little boy was probably the most love and attention he would receive for the day. Most of the little ones just wander around the streets with no one playing with them, no one paying attention to them or showing them much love. So different from the way we live here, where we watch over our little ones and pick them up the moment they begin to cry.
“The
Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor. He has
sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and
release from darkness for the prisoners…” ~Isaiah 61:1
~Leah
Rose
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