when the world grows dim

ever have one of those moments when every thing....every SINGLE thing...in your life shifts?

a mark in the journey of life that you will forever look back on and say, "that was the day that Jesus wrecked my world"

it happened to me

this very week

the visions of children playing over streams of garbage

the smell of sewage

the bright, happy faces of dozens of kids against a backdrop of gray, ugly concrete

their voices

their hands clinging to my shorts

their sweaty little faces pressed against my arm

the giant, heaving sobs that i could not fight away

...they are all still fresh for me

it all started with a plan to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

this august marks 9 years, but we had saved enough money, so we decided that 9 is just as special as 10, right?

so we got to planning and dreaming and praying and tra la la....ended up in the slums of a place called Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

bless my hubby.

he dove right in.

while i was choking back giant, heaving sobs, he was seeing these boys for who they were

no less than the third graders he teaches every day

why not pull up a chair and play some connect four?

he spoke Spanish like it was his JOB and, of course, the boys adored him

"you think i'm skilled at connect four?  wait 'til you see my moves on the court...."

his sarcasm spans continents ;)

they played well over an hour in the blazing heat of the day.

shards of glass on concrete?

no shoes?

no problem

these kids see the glimmer of a game on the horizon and grab onto it like its oxygen

J was drenched

and i was proud

after i composed myself and realized that my husband was on the verge of serious dehydration, i rounded up the kids for a lil' lesson...

turns out that Dominican kids are just like Americans...funny, loud, obnoxious even....in no time at all i was in my happy place, laughing, teaching and teasing

my heart had gone from broken and bleeding to soaring....and i got to thinking that maybe these kids have something i don't

maybe when Jesus is all you have, then He really is all you need.

is the American dream starving us?

that's when Liz, the coordinator, explained that this was actually the really nice part of town

and this club that she built?  it serves 225 kids, but there are over 600 on a waiting list

because even though it looks like depressing, gray concrete to us...

it is actually the brightest ray of light around.

kids get to play uno here

and eat a snack

and be loved by adults who won't harm them

which left me wondering what could be waiting for us in the lesser areas of town?

it didn't take long to find out

Liz took Jason and i on a tour of the "barrios" where her kids come from

i didn't take my camera.

it didn't seem right.

it was everything you see on tv

all the things you KNOW are out there

but i actually walked the streets where girls are expected to become prostitutes

i sat in the 5X5 foot tin home of a boy who thinks that his only options in life are this:

murder or be murdered

i jumped over streams of sewage and held hands with children who actually had nothing.

not

one

thing

oh, Lord...I can handle the knowing that there are people in this world who live on very little

i can appreciate a lifestyle different from my own

i can stomach the idea that not everyone has what i have....i'm wise enough to know that in the end, they may be the ones with the very most

maybe all the stuff i've surrounded myself with is actually distracting me from who YOU are

i get that.

i'm down with it.

but i'm a girl....and you've given me three daughters, Lord, and i CANNOT tolerate the idea that i am standing in a sea of girls who will sell their bodies before they are ten because they don't know any other way.

while i kept it together on the outside, i found my heart screaming the all too familiar refrain, "it's not fair!"

just one mile from here tourists are sipping margaritas on the beach and lazing the day away in hot tubs

my kids are back home visiting the zoo with their grandparents and eating chicken nuggets 'til their hearts' content

our pet kitten has a more predictable food supply than these people

it is so unfair, Lord

does it have to be this way?

i got back to the hotel and let the sadness stream out of me

then i told my husband that there is no going back

there is no forgetting those faces

having had a couple of days to distance myself from the pain of Puerto Plata, i've thought a lot about that place

those people

and a God who really could fix it all with the snap of his mighty fingers

so why doesn't he?

i've had conversations with people i deeply respect who have reminded me that despite our best efforts, there will always be poor people.

true.

Jesus said it himself.

and when you really think about it, our efforts to reduce poverty look like a huge failure

humanity has been trying to end poverty since our earliest days.

it's like a weed - it just keeps growing.

all the money and energy and resources that we have poured into helping have not eliminated the sadness.

so why try?

it's a depressing thought.

but there's what is true and then there's the TRUTH.

true, no matter how big our hearts are, J and I cannot and will not fix what is wrong here
but i can't find one reference in scripture where Jesus tells us to succeed

He doesn't command us to fix the problems of the world

He says "change it"
the TRUTH trumps what is true every time

He tells us to go and give a cup of cold water

i can do that

He asks us to feed the hungry and give clothes to the naked and visit prisoners

i can do that, too

i can take time out of my life and money out of my savings account to travel to the least of these and put my hands square on the shoulders of a boy to tell him that he is MORE than a conqueror in Christ.

i can sacrifice a trip to Disney world and bring my girls to a place where we can whisper in the ears of our friends that Jesus' thoughts of them are as relentless as the waves on the shore.

we'll be back.

not because we think that we have all the answers or because we think our American dollars will fix the heartache we faced.

but because i've spent too much of my life on Facebook, wondering what other people think of me

and because i've called Christians around the world my "brothers and sisters" but there is NO WAY that i would ever allow my biological brother to live in such conditions

and because when you stand on the shores of God's great ocean holding the hand of a baby girl who has her whole life ahead of her, but thinks she's nothing more than an object to be used, the world and all it's trappings begin to look pretty dim.

suddenly my 403b doesn't seem so important

and my mortgage seems like less of a burden and more of a blessing

and my car can really last me another year

and every resource i have is worth the investment of laying down my life to find that every single thing Jesus ever said was actually true.

when we place His love and His commands at the center, we see how lovely He is.

and how we are fully equipped to do the work He has called us to do.

Lord, make my life so small
so
very
small
and so insignificant
that when this little spark of my life is gone
even my name will be forgotten

and let the only thing that remains be a resounding "allelujia" on the lips of those you sent me to love