I know I know, I haven`t blogged in forever. I seemed to have developed a servere case of blog block. It is a rare case for me, and me I tried to find a cure. Inspirational stories came and went and still I was unable to capture the moments on the world wide web. However one story has been told a few times before, but I thought I would give my perspective on that day.
When I was a child all my money went to stickers for quite awhile. Fuzzy, smelly, sparkly fabulous stickers. I had thousands of them. It was my dream to have the biggest and best collection. For some children saving up for that Suzy Bake Oven, or the Millenium Falcon, or that shinny new bike was their dream. Children can be very motivated when they dream of the end results. For 10yr old Brittany Hylton it was a horse of her own. Brittany is a very determined little girl. She has been saving for years and came up with a pretty decent savings. Not once did she break the bank for the instant gratification of candy or a movie night, Oh no this little one had her eye on the prize.
Haiti devestated and shocked us all. And we sat and mourned the loss of so many people who we had come to love last Febuary, Brittany mourned beside us. She heard the testimonies and she was moved. It was one particular night in her families entertainment room that the whole lot of us, gathered to join in on a conference call with Miquel. He had been over into Port au Prince and seen first hand the disasterous wake the earthquake left behind. He shared his testimony, and a story that will haunt my heart forever about a mother with her small 2 yr old child who had lost her leg and was out of the IV drip. She was very weak, but the mother was desperate to get back to her home and search for her other children she was forced to leave behind. If she took this child it could mean her death on the way. These were the realities of Haiti, and I could see Brittany`s heart connect to the pain of its people.
That night she called her parents into her room and in a beautiful act of generousity she offered up her savings, every last cent for the people of a broken nation. Her father blessed his daughter and they donated it all that night. A 10yr old girl gave up her dream for the sake of someone else. What an example of generousity. What an outpouring of love. Brittany gets it. She understands that suffering goes beyond our wants and needs and that we have a duty to love and help our brothers and sisters around the world. Jesus tells us that we are to become like little children. With children like Brittany in the world, lets just say we have some big shoes to fill.
