Full Arms, Heavy Heart

Haiti. My God, Haiti.  Her children.  Her people. What, if anything, could I do for them?

I can barely do more than glance at the media coverage of the Hatians caught in her tangle.  Though it draws me in, I'd rather not see it at all; but I feel the obligation to keep up with it so I've cautiously allowed myself to read occasional news reports through my phone. 

A picture of an orphaned baby weighs on my heart.  Though I've never been keen on the thought before, I glimpsed what our family might look like if we were allowed one of those beautiful children as our own.  And I liked it. 

The story of an elder woman who has overcome hardship after hardship only to be drowned in the wake of this one, and in her weakening state is leaving it "up to baby Jesus" makes my stomach reel.  I think of my own grandmother in her hip senior community apartment reading devotionals and playing scrabble with her neighbors. Suddenly, I am grateful that despite her chronic pain from sciatica and daily slew of prescriptions that consume her fixed income each month, she has a warm bed, steady ground and a 4th story view of a courtyard, albeit bare.

I'm so glad that my 2 year old is oblivious of such devastation, that her biggest heartache is that I wouldn't let her watch Elmo while we ate dinner this evening, which she unsuccessfully whined halfheartedly about for a minute or two then dismissed with a rendition of some made up song about guitars. I sing praises that Eve had her first bite of cereal today (her very, very first!), her chubby cheeks squeezing her eyes into rainbows as she smiled about the discovery of it.  It was organic.  With probiotics.  Probably the most expensive one at the store, the money for which could buy that elder woman in Haiti a case of bottled water and rice for a week.

What could I possibly know of what weighs heavy on Haiti now?  Nothing.  And I am a bit guilty to be grateful for that--to be grateful it's not my grandmother on the dirt, that it's not my children that are crying unheard tears into no one's arms, orphaned, victims to their country's unfortunate circumstance.

I put my girls to bed tonight with a prayer for "protection" in my heart--that they may never be in the midst of such despair, that they may never be the ones beneath the rubble, that they may always at the very least, have each other.

If I were rich, I would send the orphanages there a fortune.  If I were 20 something and still the idealistic, adventurous woman of my youth, I would go there, or somewhere where I could do more than just type words on a blog and send money via text message.  If I had appropriate medical skills and no family, I would go there and clean their wounds.  If someone could fly 30 orphaned children to my house, I would just be here for them and hold them and cook for them and tell them that the ground doesn't shake here, that the water is clean, that their mothers' love will find them through me.  I would do that all day and night. For as long as it takes.  I would.  But I'm none of the above.  No one will fly those children to my house, though I hope that somehow someone really will fly them out of that forsaken place to loving arms. 

It's bittersweet that while my children are playing on the rug tomorrow or adorably begging me for a ride in the double seated wagon, someone else's will be lying on the hard, unforgiving earth, heartbreakingly begging for water, hoping the ground that supports them doesn't rumble again, this time to swallow them whole.

I don't know such despair on a level even close to theirs.  I've been afforded the birthright of a middle class American that leaves me unable to really even fathom it.  I don't know rich, but I don't truly know poor either.   Still, even though I can't pretend to know what it is like to be Hatian right now, I have a heavy heart for them all, and steady prayer of "protection" in my heart--for the rescue workers, the missionaries, the citizens of Haiti, the children, the babies, the little girls with bright eyes behind the sorrowful face--protect them, be with them, help them find peace.