Getting ready.

Packing.  I've been putting it off and off and off until it has to happen tonight. Leigh's coming over for our routine "pack and play."  It just makes packing more fun.

Courtney joked with me this morning because I packed 3 to 4 weeks in advance when we went to Haiti last summer.  I guess you could say I'm getting slack more comfortable with these things?!

So many thoughts are running through my head as I attempt to pack here and there and mentally prepare for this trip.  I've read two blog posts this morning that struck a nerve.  One and the other:

Here’s a convo from my facebook feed recently.

Friend of Mine

I just dropped by iPhone! And the glass is completely shattered!! Grrrrrr!!!!!

Top of Form

Her Friend

OMG!! That is my greatest fear!! I’m really sorry you are going through this! I would cry!

Friend of Mine

I am really upset! I’m going to cry!! It’s going to cost sooooo much to get it fixed!

Her Friend

Yea, I would cry too! I totally understand!!

Seriously?? Is that worth out tears? Today I held the hands of a woman who buried her baby in the ground lat weekend. She could hardly walk as the trauma and grief had caused her to ignore her physical pains of recent child birth and infection had spread. Her infant son’s life is in the balance as the ‘disease’ that took his sister threatens to invade his small body if Mama can’t gain strength to feed him.

I sat next to a woman too full of pain (shame?) to lift her eyes. Her bloodshot eyes showed the stress of sickness coming to near. Her daughter sat uncomfortably on her lap, but no amount of adjustment or soothing causes hunger pains to leave. Her loose skin and small stature made their poverty too obvious.

I hugged a friend I’ve gone months without seeing and laughed along with her as she gripped at me for not visiting more. I looked inside her home and we talked about the water that enters when it rains, not too surprising as it is built on top of a swamp. The house is built on the same land she tried to live on a year ago when the police came and beat her and stole all her belongings. She’s sure she’s safe, I express concern.

These aren’t the extreme. Just a few of my friends I passed on my normal route today. Just the ones that came to mind as I thought over my day. Just the few I’ve seen in my small corner of the world. A small corner of a world where disease and poverty and injustice are rampant. A world where lives are taken every minute by things that should not exist.

Yet in another corner of the world, we can be upset by iPhones, traffic, heat, football losses, expensive clothes, etc, etc, etc.

I’m just not sure that’s ok.