Who Will Care for My Children?

I lay in bed on Saturday night, not able to sleep and my mind wandered to if I could survive on a deserted island. (Weird, I know). I started thinking about if I could find food, fresh water, find a way to catch fish, etc. Then I imagined trying to put the girls down for a nap in the sand, not gonna happen! I started to seriously think about survival with two babies in tow. My mind went to not being able to find proper nutrition for them. I know how fussy they get if they are an hour late for a feeding and I imagined them going all day, as I frantically tried to learn to climb trees to get some kind of fruit. Suddenly, it was like I was punched in the stomach.

I have been around poverty a lot. I have seen it first hand in the U.S. and abroad.  I have lived among it in Mexico. When I see it firsthand or through pictures or hear stories, I process it as “fact” and a sad fact that we, as the body of Christ, should be pouring ourselves into. However, that night in bed, it became personal, like it hasn’t for years. I imagined Jada and Adia slowly becoming listless as their hunger pains grow and then watching them wilt away as day after day, I can’t provide the nutrition they need. Oh God. The pain of even imagining it was too much. Then, facts that I have presented countless times on education, infant mortality rates, lack of clean drinking water, AIDS, slavery, prostitution, came alive in my mind, imagining walking to the edge of a filthy river and letting my children drink, knowing we are all getting disease because of our thirst, but this being our only option. I heard the words in my heart, “this is reality for so many”. I cried in pain as I thought about all the mama’s that experience this. Oh God, be merciful, may your name be known!

I had just done an LSM presentation and talked about a Mom had AIDS and her children were HIV+. She knew she didn’t have much time left and was hoping to get them into a Loving Shepherd Ministry Home of Hope. As I remembered her and look into her eyes in the picture, these words echoed around my head, “Who will care for my children?”

As I recount this, I weep, I have a sleeping child in the room beside me and a happy, bubble-blowing child on the floor behind me, we just finished our morning solid foods and bottle. I get to watch them get more alive and chunkier each day. I am thankful that this has once again affected me to the core, it has changed once again from fact, to a fact that shakes me to my soul. May God continually break my heart with what breaks His.