Blogging about life in Minnesota, raising our six kids with Down syndrome while battling Breast Cancer.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit! She's up!"

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Wide awake: 2:00 a.m.

Tonight (this morning?) I'm wide awake. I'm sure the caffeine I had at 11:00 p.m didn't help much. Since I've been up until 2-3:00 a.m every night, I'm kind of hoping it won't be too difficult to get back on U.S. time when I get home, especially considering I have finals the following day! Speaking of which, if you could please say a prayer for me, I'm really struggling with math right now. I'm having to teach myself the last 2 chapters, and that's what my final exam will be on when I return. My professor volunteered to send me the answer key for those two chapters, yet after emailing him 3 times over the last week I still haven't received anything. That means I can't work backward to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I know he's busy, and he it's not his fault I'm missing 2 weeks of class. I'll just have to figure it out for myself.

Ok...done whining....

The other reason I'm awake is because of the things I wasn't allowed to take pictures of, yet the images are burned in my mind forever. It's like a scar that will never heal, no matter what I do to try healing it. I guess that's what God does when he wants you to do something. He starts a fire to scar your heart so that you'll pay attention to it, never forget it, and keep working to care for it. I'm sure those who are working in Haiti understand what I'm trying to explain, and those who've seen inside the orphanages here in Eastern Europe understand it too.

It is impossible to come to a place like this, and leave the same person you were before. I've known for a long time I needed to come here and see for myself, because I didn't feel I could adequately advocate for these children and families without doing so. Now I have seen, and now I have to do something. There are children who will be dead in a matter of months. There are others who will be subjected to far worse horrors than they've already experienced if they're not adopted soon. How can I walk away knowing that? How can I hold a child in my arms, feel him sink into me, his spirit soaking up the love from my heart like a dry sponge dropped into a sink full of water. It was all I could do to put him down, when what I really wanted to do was run with him, knowing that he's going to die very soon because nobody will save him. It's not because he's sick, it's because nobody wants him. How can that be? How can ANYONE live with that knowledge and not DO something? How can I hold a child, watch her desperate attempts to prove she is worthy of being loved, then just turn my back and pretend I'd never seen her, only to wake up every morning knowing today could be the day she is moved to hell itself?

This is too much knowledge for me. This is more than I wanted to know. Why couldn't I stand back for once, and let someone else get involved? Let someone else fix the problems in a country 1/2 way around the world? Because, God CHOSE me. HE put me here. He put ME....here....HERE!!! Do you know ME? Those who do are wondering what in the world *I* am doing here. HE took a branding iron that is his call, and pressed it against my heart, searing it...scarring it...making it permanent. The very part of me that makes me who I am....my heart...has been branded by the call of God to do THIS.

Wow...that's a lot to think about. I wonder if I am worthy of this job?

5 comments:

Googsmom said...

So very worthy!!

Kelley said...

Leah, yes you are infinitely worthy. But, maybe, it will help you to remember that God doesn't call the worthy, He makes worthy the called.

Ellen Stumbo said...

Every time I read your posts I cry. I got to see Nina's room, only her room. She was in a "good" orphanage in Eastern Europe where she was cared for. Yet, what I saw will be forever etched in my heart. I saw children being mistreated and abused, and Nina has started to tell us about things that happened to her. She was a favorite, I cannot imagine the treatment had she not been a worker's favorite.
I understand, oh so well, which is why I cry with your posts. I have seen it too, and you have seen even more.
I will pray for you friend, and you are being God's hands in a dark place.
THANK YOU!

Karien Prinlsoo said...

From the little bit I have learned from you over the net: there is nobody MORE worthy.If I, who don't know you, know that you won't just let it there, God knows you so much better and He knows that He can trust you with that....
If the math is to much of a struggle, you can email me and I'll find someone here to help, put it out step by step. That is if I remember correctly that it is school math...I have time for that. Bless you both on your journey ahead!

P said...

Makes the called worthy. Do you know ME? And a few other perfectly divine quote slogans about scarring your heart into action. in that post here (April 11th?).

You are scarring the world through your writing and photography and HUMOR (in other posts) towards world peace and why can't people adopt from institutions?!! PETA this is NOT. We MUST FIX this dilema yesterday.

I am an actuary, actuaries know math. Email me, we can find someone local (MN?). BUT-- If your professor is not moved to help you himself, let me at him...