Dear Blog,
I wasn't feeling right the night before last, I couldn't figure it out, felt down, a heavy heart. Same the next morning and afternoon. Just found out my grandma had a stroke, she's in the hospital and can't talk.
There is so much pain in the world, in community, within families, within every person. There are tremendous burdens people carry. Wounds people carry. Unhealed hearts. It's truly sobering how much suffering is out there when you really walk along side people.
And I’m not talking about just in other countries.
Every person.
Home or Abroad.
The person you just passed in the hallway at work…
The person you passed in the grocery store…
The friend you haven't spoken to in months or years…
Just ask…
For me, it's something that I'm processing still. It's why God has me out here. To see and learn these things. It makes me want to spend all of my life loving on people, with every moment I have. With every ounce of energy I have, to pour out love in every way possible to every person possible.
I've sat with a 96+ year old woman and her husband in the mountains of El Salvador, prayed over them, both brought to tears. I've prayed over paralyzed men in their homes & drug addicts in the alleys, I've listened to girls tell me stories of abuse, losing fathers, losing both mothers and fathers. I’ve prayed over developmentally challenged children confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak. I've looked into the eyes of the man in the dump, fighting daily for life, fighting to provide for his family. I’ve sat, talked and looked into the pained eyes of men. The aching bodies of the men here that are poisoned every day they work the sugar cane fields, watching their kidneys fail and their bodies give way to the poisons left in their blood from the pesticides used. I've seen mothers look at me with no idea where their next meal will come from. I've seen kids sniff glue right in front of me because the hunger pains are brutal. I've known boys who were walking in victory over drugs and desiring to be something so much more, one in particular dreamed of being a pastor one day, only to get up and leave without notice and return to the streets. I met Eddy who's father cast his sister aside because he didn't want a girl (this is far too common). I’ve met girls who were forced into sexual abuse within their own families… it's no longer a documentary, article or photo. It's a face, a name, a voice…. a relationship.
This is what I'm processing. I'm just a man like anyone else.
And I open my heart to you as I walk each day…
