I pity me.

We have been in Africa for two months now. I have seen things here that have shaken me to the core. My eyes have gazed upon sights that I won’t find anywhere else in the world.

I’m not talking about lions or the fiery African sunsets (even though that’s pretty amazing also). I’m talking about the people and the way they live. I have seen squalor that words won’t possibly help you understand. Most of the children here are dirty, filthy, wearing torn clothes that are two sizes too small or two sizes too big. There are dozens and dozens of children playing in the dusty roads of every village. They play with toys they made out of whatever they could find in the trash. They wear stained and tattered party dresses and discarded Halloween costumes. I actually saw a little girl in a Snow White costume last week. Probably the only dress she owns. Oh my heavens, she was beautiful.

Yet, I realized something surprising. Each night I go to my little tent-home and lay down with my mind spinning from all that I have seen, all that I have heard, all the need.

And I don’t feel one bit sorry for them.

I don’t pity them at all.

Oh don’t get me wrong. I love them like I have never loved children before. I am burdened for them. I pray for God to use me to show His love to them and to provide for their practical needs as well. But when I take time to sort through my thoughts I realize that the one I pity…

I pity me.

I pity you.

I feel sorry for us. For Americans. For our plush, comfortable, secure and luxurious lives surrounded by more stuff than we will ever know what to do with.

You see, I can’t pity them. I simply can’t. Because even though they possess so little, they own the world. Even though they have faced devastation I can’t begin to fathom, they have joy I will never understand, joy that nothing in heaven or earth can take away. Even though they don’t know where their next meal will come from, or how to get to a doctor if they’re sick, they have peace that passes my understanding. They know the Healer and they know the One who sustains.

So I come to the end of the day and I realize that I feel sorry for us. I feel pity for all the years I wasted thinking the most important thing in life is having money to pay bills and buy myself nice things. My heart breaks thinking about my friends, whom I love dearly, working themselves silly just to keep up with the Jones’s. I think of the people in America who are burying themselves in debt just so they will look worthy… in the eyes of the world.

I came to Africa to give all I have for them. But oh my goodness…they’ve given me so much more than I will ever understand. I wish you all could come here and walk these dusty roads holding their sweet little hands. I promise you wouldn’t leave the same.