A Changing Perspective

Sunday, February 23, 2014



Over the past week we’ve been caring for one of our teenage moms who delivered this past month.  She’s young and the condition we’ve been seeing her daily for is heartbreaking.  Today as I waited in the quiet clinic for her to show up I became discouraged. The time we’d agreed for her to come came and went.  She didn’t show.  I was frustrated.  Frustration turned to a little anger.  Doesn’t she know we’re trying to help her? Why can’t she just show up here?! She can’t do anything else until she heals…she can’t possibly be too busy!

My frustration and little bit of anger melted into sadness as I thought about the injustice and effects of poverty.  It has been life-long for her.  She wasn’t a middle class citizen who one day had a date with misfortune.  No, she was born into poverty and that’s all she knows.  It’s a culture within a culture and one I really know little of.  Perhaps she doesn’t know how to tell time.  Maybe she does, but even then she likely doesn’t have a clock hanging in her house.  She probably has a phone, but she likely has no power source in her house and the sporadic electricity in the area lately may have left it uncharged.  She doesn’t live far, but walking the distance from her house to the MC would be terribly painful with her condition. Perhaps she doesn’t have the Haitian Gourde equivalent of $0.13USD to climb into a crowded taptap that could bring her the short distance.  It could be she just really doesn’t want to come, but even a lifetime of poverty plays into that scenario.  Could it be, regardless of how much we’ve told her, the importance of daily care just doesn’t make sense in her mind? After all, she does feel much better than the first day we treated her. Surely that means she doesn’t still need care every day.  

My melting frustration and anger turned me into a puddle of tears…for the sadness of this reality that is all around me, for my initial response of frustration and lack of grace.  And I wonder how many times my frustration, anger and lack of grace have been because of my inability to see and understand? Lack of grace can only be a fault on my part. Only I am responsible for opening my eyes to see the world around me for what it is and not what I think it should be. Only I am responsible for my response, be it one of grace or the lack thereof. 

May we have eyes to see, hearts to understand, and responses of grace. 

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