A Heart for Haiti

I thought today I would write this funny lit­tle story about how dif­fer­ent it is for women get­ting dressed vs. men get­ting dressed. I became fas­ci­nated by this idea this week­end when Vitaliy and I had a cou­ple of get togeth­ers to go to over the week­end. The amount of effort put in for women vs. men is just so dif­fer­ent. I thought I’d share my obser­va­tion with you in hopes to receive some encour­age­ment from my fel­low women out there read­ing. I wanted to be reminded that I’m not alone in the world of blow dry­ers, straight­ener, and tummy suck­ing panty­hose. But then I woke up and remem­bered my prayer last night before I went to bed, “Lord, please don’t let me close my eyes to the pain and dev­as­ta­tion of Haiti.” My lit­tle issues, though funny, just didn’t feel right to share in light of the sit­u­a­tion right now. I now have a new obser­va­tion to ponder.

Why is it that we can so eas­ily block out the pain that oth­ers are going through? I can’t pos­si­bly be alone in this thought. I really won­der how many peo­ple out there texted on their cell phones to donate their $10 to Red Cross and checked it off their list that they had helped. Now, don’t get me wrong, every sin­gle thing you do to help means a lot. But I’m more won­der­ing about our hearts. No, let me rephrase. I’m won­der­ing about my own heart.

I want my heart to break for those in pain. I want to expose myself to the real­i­ties of the world so that I can be held account­able to reach out and help oth­ers. I don’t want to be pas­sive. I don’t want to stay com­fort­able. I want to hurt with those that hurt. How do we do that when they are so far away? I mean, if I’m hon­est, I some­times strug­gle to do this with those that are near. With dev­as­ta­tion this great, where do we even start or how can we even make a dif­fer­ence? I want to give finan­cially and I will. I think that is VERY impor­tant. How­ever, I don’t want my heart to be dis­con­nected from my check book.

I remem­ber when tragedy hit our fam­ily. It obvi­ously wasn’t the mag­ni­tude of the tragedy that is hap­pen­ing in Haiti right now. How­ever, it did include death, con­fu­sion, and com­plete life alter­ing con­se­quences. Peo­ple reached out to us, loved us and sup­ported us. They didn’t hide their eyes or their hearts from our pain. Peo­ple cried with me and held me as I trem­bled with fear. I never want to for­get that pain or that help­ing hand. These are the things that remind me to feel and to love. Remem­ber­ing the love that I received from God and oth­ers is what inspires me to want to serve, to give and help oth­ers. We can­not make it through this life on our own. We need each other.