Actually, I kind of lied to you guys. I was going to write about our trek up into Reuben’s parent’s village in Nepal– the beauty, the hardship, the rewards—but that just isn’t what is on my heart right now. Today I am broken. 
Let me tell you a little story. Here in Andhra Pradesh, India, there lives a little girl named Aloe. She is currently three years old, and has both a form of Dwarfism and mental illness. At the age of three she is about half the size she should be and will never grow to be more than bout 3 and ½ feet tall. Despite her tiny size, she thrives. She loves to be picked up, tossed around, and her hair played with. I have rarely seen a special needs child so energetic and completely full of life.
Yesterday, Peggy and I went to the office to begin doing some paper work for our ministry host, Sarah’s Covenant Homes (www.schindia.com), an orphanage for disabled children. Due to being sick for a week, I hadn’t been out of the house much, and decided to start out slow, with the office work they had asked us to help with. I was a bit sad that I had been unable to visit more than one of the four homes the children live in, but knew that this was valuable work as well.
Because I had met so few of the children, I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew while I was fishing through their files. I was wrong. My last folder to go through was Aloe. I skimmed her file for the information I needed, but ended up being stuck on one page, her history. As I read the page over and over, and stared at the picture of the tiny baby, I couldn’t stop the tears. She was abandoned at the age of 3 months… 3 months. This beautiful little girl was tossed aside, left to die when she didn’t have the slightest chance on her own. And her medical file is so large, that she must have been in and out of hospitals more times than anyone
can imagine. I have never before been so broken for a child. I have grown to love them, have compassion on them, let my heart melt for them a bit even, but I had never let something like that permeate my emotions. It’s just too hard.
“As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34
How can we do it? It sounds so simple, so Christianized even… just love. But it shouldn’t be even remotely flippant, or easy to love, especially as Jesus loved. So why do we think about it that way? How have we turned loving into just being “nice”? 1 Peter 1:22 tells us to love one another deeply, from the heart; that means letting things in, letting things tear you apart, letting these little ones pierce your heart. But how do we survive it? How can our hearts possibly take this wrenching? How can we feel it all, love that deeply, and yet not crumble under the enormity of knowing that we can’t fix it; we can’t stop it; we can’t reach them all? How could what we are doing ever possibly be enough? It isn’t, but God knows, and He is enough.
How can we do it? We have to give it all back to Him. In my last blog I wrote that we cannot give to God what He does not give to us first, and it’s true. We can only love these little ones anywhere close to how He has loved us, because He gives us His eyes, and fills us with His compassion; but He doesn’t expect us to take it and drown under it, He expects us to get down on our faces and give it right back to Him so that He can take the burden and turn it into something beautiful in our hearts and our lives. Don’t be afraid to fully dive into His love; don’t be afraid that you will crush under the weight of it. He is waiting to lift the burdens, renew your heart, and swell your capacity to not only give His love freely to others, but dive into it for yourself. I promise you will never regret it for a moment. So dive.
(pics: Top – Aloe. Middle – Aloe with my team leader Bethany. Bottom – Another little special needs orphan, Chelsea)
