First World Problems

It has been one of those weeks.

Our entire little family was sick... Cora had a stuffy nose and a cough one night, and though she seemed fine the next afternoon, three days later I was out of commission.  I finally went to the doctor, and she loaded me up on antibiotics after diagnosing me with just about every -itis in the books.  Jacob caught it too, so we were quite the sickly pair trying to take care of a busy baby girl.

But we all got mostly better just in time for our trip to Washington over Labor Day weekend.  It's been planned for nearly a year; a celebration of my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary.  Except we never made it out of the airport.

A bird flew into the engine of our plane, grounding it indefinitely.  The alternative schedule the airline came up with for us had us arriving at our destination at nearly 4 am TX time, a near impossibility for our little "barely-well" family.  Long, ugly story short -- The trip was off.

So frustrating...

But you know... this is, as they call it, a "first world problem."

I'm not going to lie.  It sent us into a funk and made us quite irritable and grumpy.  But we are all still breathing.  We do have medicine to take for our various -itis maladies.  And our baby is healthy and happy and quite plump.  My friend Caroline lives in Kenya, and in an email to me the other day, she shared this:  We have a friend who works for the World Food Programme, and he described this tent in a refugee camp where nursing mothers go to try and feed their babies.  He said the babies are so malnourished, they just vomit up whatever little milk their moms can produce.  The other day when our errands ran a little late, Cora decided she was STARVING in the 5 minute drive home.  She screamed the whole way home, and her cries made me ache until I could meet her need.  What if I couldn't?!  What would I do when she resigned herself to the hunger and simply stopped crying?

What do we do with this world?!  This crazy, crazy world where a few of us are browsing Etsy for cute accents for our already beautiful homes while most of us try to cobble together something for our children to eat for dinner tonight.  Where some of us whine about fallen-through travel plans while others make plans to escape their famine and war-struck countries on foot.  Where some of us run to Walgreens to take away our every ache and pain, while most of us couldn't even imagine what that kind of medical care access would be like.  Is it not absolutely surreal?  I wonder every day why I was dealt the lucky hand...

I know I can't take the weight of the world on my shoulders... that's a burden He doesn't ask us to bear, for He already carries it.  But He does ask us to find our place and care; to order our priorities so that those who have not can have a little more... to share with those who are hungry, hurting, ill-clothed, and without shelter.  That's what we've been doing this summer with the fundraiser for NDFH's medical fund.  We have one week left, friends.  One week to raise about $2,500.  And when we raise that, it will automatically be tripled to $7,500 and we will meet our summertime goal of $30,000 for surgeries and medical care for some little ones who don't yet have mamas and papas to do it for them.  

Let's do this.