Top Ten #1-Things I Just Have to Say

While I truly wanted to come up with some way to explain my trip that would rival the works of Walt Whitman all that I can seem to come up with is "top ten" lists. I have written about a thousand of them in my head this week and have decided this will be how I talk about my trip. This may take me about 100 posts, nobody feel obligated to read it this is more for me than anyone. I have to write things down to understand them and to keep them with me and so the next 100 or so posts will be mainly so I don't forget the last 12 days of my life....This first list is the things that I just want to say to the world that I should probably keep to myself. Haiti does that to me. Sitting next to my new friend Kelly I had to laugh at her donation plan. This beautiful woman says with severe sincerity, "oh my brother WILL be sponsoring a child even if I have to move his hand to write the check with my own fingers." Sometimes after you have spent a week literally watching children starving to death and watching people waiting in line for hours for the possibility that there kids might get to attend school all of the hand holding and petting you know you should do goes down the drain. So the top 10 things I have to say are as follows:
10-I have absolutely no call for whining about "too much" laundry to do. I am dang lucky I have clothes to wash
9-I spend a good portion of my life worrying that I am "too fat". Do you realize that my big gut means I have food to eat in abundance?
8-I get "overwhelmed" by how busy I am and how my kids have so many places to go and things to do. It should occur to me more often how blessed I am they have choices. Piano lessons cost money and they take time, while I was at church on Sunday in Haiti there was a piano but not in the whole packed congregation was there someone who had the blessing of learning how to play.
7-Sometimes I am aggravated by my kids bouncing off of the walls and making me crazy. Do you know that bouncing means they are well and healthy. I sat with children so starved that they didn't have the strength to move a muscle.
6-I live in a 3 bedroom rental that most people would think we are "crammed into". I myself have put on my martyr face about this place. I spent the week with a man who shares one small bedroom with his wife and two children in an orphanage packed with children. He says he would hope someday they would have a place for their family but he could never complain because "God is so good to us."
5-Sometimes church seems so difficult for me. Not the believing part, that part is as natural to me as breathing, but the taking 5 kids to church part. We have trouble sometimes filling our chappell's on Sunday. In Haiti the chappel was packed to capacity with people just thrilled to be there and honored to have the gospel in their lives. Half of them looked like they hadn't eaten in a year and not one face looked anything less than joyful.
4-Seriously when was the last time I thanked God for a garbage man and clean streets?
3-When my son broke his arm last week I drove him all of 10 miles to a state of the art hospital (yes my city friends it does count as state of the art) where he was taken care of quickly and efficiently. Because of insurance it also cost me very little. I then had the tenacity to complain that I had to watch him close for 10 days until it could be casted. I should have been grateful that the cast was coming and that he would be just fine.
2-I spent a week with a handful of adoptive families who had just a few days to try and put all the love they could into their kids in that time not having any idea when their children would be home. Some of them had already lost kids and knew to well that sometimes they don't ever come home. When I got a hold of my kids yesterday, especially my Grayson, I just held them and kissed them and thanked the Lord they are all here and they are all well. When was the last time I just let myself be grateful my children are alive and I get to be the one to take care of them?
1-I learend myself that if everyone made an effort to do just a little that we could make a difference. We have everything and I have seen first hand people that have nothing. Do you want to feed children that are literally starving to death? I can set that up. Do you want to help educate a child and make it less likely that child and her children and her children's children will starve to death, I can set that up too.
So this is the first of my thoughts on Haiti. I guess you can see why I am having a hard time explaining my week to people. I guess it needs to be prefaced when you ask with, "do you really want to know and do you want to see me cry....