Wake up World. We Need Each Other

My heart is in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti right now. Haiti has always been very close to my heart. Both of my parents have traveled there numerous times with outreach groups. My father helped to build a clinic in Bourne. His team brought running, clean water and electricity to a hospital that had been without it for almost 14 years. I've listened to every story from both my parents, dreaming about the day that I could go.

I used to write to a boy named Rock who lived there and met my father. My dad showed him a picture of me on one of his visits and Rock would send me back letters with the groups who went down to help. He told me how beautiful I was and how he wished to meet me and draw pictures for me. His English got better with each letter and he drew pictures on the bottom of each one. It was hard to send many letters unless a group was traveling down and could find him. But I still have those letters.

I stopped hearing from him after a hurricane hit the coast a few years back. I don't know what happened to him...whether he was lost in the storm or the groups traveling down couldn't find him. On Dad's last trip he said he didn't see him. I wonder where he is right now and if he is okay.

I think what touches me most about everything I've learned about Haiti is that there is an unshakable faith in the people there. People who have nothing but each other. Little food, little money, little opportunity...the nearest hospital miles and miles away and only two or three vehicles for transport over horrible roads. Yet when Dad told us stories of packed churches and joyful voices and songs to God, I just wanted to BE there. To drop everything and feel an ounce of that trust, that joy, that celebration and gratitude for what God has given us.

We forget how blessed we are. It's so easy to do. Just this week I was stressing over money and school and books and studying abroad...upset over it all. Upset over what? Nothing. I had to take a moment today after watching heartbreaking foootage of the Earthquake damage in Haiti, to just breakdown.

(Thank God for room mates who are loving, and understanding people who wont making fun of me when I fall to pieces watching tv footage.)

I had it all wrong. My vision this week... was not beyond myself. And this earthquake has shaken me awake again. We need each other. Our suffering, our joy, our sorrows hold hands. We are one world community. We forget how connected we are. How much it matters that we see each other, hear each other, help each other.

This morning I took out the beautiful bible my parents got me for Christmas. I've never been much of a bible reader (and when I did read it, I was/am a New Testament kinda girl...) , I've never been much of a religious person...but I believe in God with all my heart. And my parents gave my sister and I each a bible of our own, knowing that we would take something different from it. Dad said to us, "just read a little bit, a small verse when you feel it. Let it sink in. Cause you will take something different away from it every time." He went on to tell us that sometimes he would read a passage and not truly understand its meaning until something would happen later in the day that he could really apply it to. Like it was meant for him to read that day.

This morning, I took mine out and flipped to a random page, falling on Mark 4:40. It was the story about Jesus calming a storm. He had fallen asleep at the stern and his friends begged him to wake up. "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" And Jesus wakes up and says to the sea, "Peace, be still." and the storm was calm. And then he says to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith in me?"

It put things back in perspective. Have faith in me. Don't be afraid. Even in the midst of destruction, even in the middle of a storm...God is here. And God is the way. The way, the Truth and the Light. And I know things will get better.

My friend Morgan told me about one of her professors, who said something I think is really fitting, so I'll leave you with this:

"Catastrophe is key to understanding, and understanding is key to peace."

Be well, World.