Sometimes I feel so two-faced.  So caught between two realities.  Mine and the one I have seen and continue to imagine that goes on in countless lives across the globe.  I want new bathroom fixtures, and living room flooring, to upgrade and get caught up in the home improvement and decor obsession our society has, to make things look more beautiful.  But on the other side of my mind, my other face, I ache at seeing homeless children starving, kids with no shoes begging for a chance to go to school, to have a family.  I want to provide all the best opportunities for my children, that they are well-educated and well-rounded, well-read, involved in sports and music and good Christian service opportunities.  And yet on the other side of the world, or maybe on the other side of my city, there is a child who would pray for one opportunity, or just supper.  They have an unimaginable world, a painful daily existence.

How can I even care for the things I have to deal with every day in this world?  Or be wanting of more? ... When  I remember holding a dying child, a mother's heart breaking because of something so simple as clean water.  My mind, my heart, my day gets caught up in my tasks and my family's needs, and their pain doesn't negate the need for what I have to do here, or the joy I can find in planting annuals and making my yard a little more lovely.  But I feel two-faced, torn between trying to creating a middle place for these 2 things to exist.  Does it matter that I think of them and care?  Or say a prayer?  Should I care less for what is in front of me because we are so full and they are not?  I still sit in my comfortable living room and still complain, about getting groceries that I can afford.  Why was I chosen to be born here, to win the life lottery?

And yet meeting some in that poverty, they have something we don't.  Yes they are poor, but they have more community, more faith, more need to rely on a God that is so much bigger than they are.  And I can carry on in my self sufficient bubble if I choose to, barely needing to beg for something from God.  Except HIS MERCY, to save me from myself.  HIS GRACE, the need to be completely loved and fulfilled by the joy and peace I can only get from being in HIS PRESENCE.

I can't get that part of Africa out me.  Once you've been somewhere, felt something, it becomes a part of who you are.  But sometimes it feels so caught in between. So big, that how can one person make a difference?  But I see it and read stories of people who are, and want to be one of those people.