If you're looking for this week's Wed. Hodgepodge questions you'll find them here.
Resolution: a firm decision to do or not do something.
After daughter2 and I had finished at the mall on Friday afternoon, we decided to stop at our local Christian book store so I could pick up some cards. As we stood in the check out line waiting to pay, a display just behind us caught our attention. Sitting on the table was an ordinary water bottle.
Or maybe not so ordinary.
The water inside was dirty. Daughter2 picked up the bottle for a closer look. "Is this what they drink, Mom?" "Is it?"
There in a display rack, placed neatly beside the dirty water, were the faces. You know the ones I mean.
Faces of children who live in communities where life's most basic and essential ingredient, clean water, may not exist. Children who are hungry. Children whose mothers somehow eke out a living but not enough of one to properly feed or clothe their babies. Children who live in villages and countries and continents ravaged by disease half a world away. Children whose eyes stare back at you from their picture on a sponsor card. Children who live in poverty so extreme it cannot be fully imagined from the comfort of a suburban shopping center on a sunny autumn afternoon.
Can we walk away from this display?
Can we leave them sitting on a shelf in a bookstore?
I can't.
And I know for certain my idealistic, compassionate, full of hope, 21 year old daughter can't either. I could almost hear the wheels turning as she calculated the cost. She has a weekly babysitting job in college town and as we stood in front of that store display on Friday afternoon she made a resolution. She would sponsor a child.
Hubs and I already sponsor a child...this is not something new in our home, but as I stand in this store I am suddenly weighed down by the sheer number of children who need help. And hope.
I resolve too. Hubs isn't there in the store with us but he gets this. He has a heart for children and we are able. But how do we choose? How do you say, this one and not that one. My heart hurts. I glance over at my daughter who in that moment, seems wiser than her years. A picture of her happy laughing baby self dances through my head. She lifts her face to mine and we share a look. We are thinking the same thought...how we would like to snatch up all the cards in the store and make them ours.
We go back to the faces. The store manager tells us we can also look thru a data base if we have a particular country in mind. We say no thank you....we want one from the table with the dirty water. World Vision has partnered with this particular chain of stores in an attempt to find sponsors for children who may be rotated out of the program unless someone steps forward. We want one of those.
Daughter2 finally makes her selection. A little girl with big dark eyes from a village in Lesotho. Can we even find Lesotho on a map? We'll learn.
I break with tradition. Hubs and I have supported children thru World Vision for many years. Always girls until today. Today an eight year old boy whose eyes look into mine from across the page is the one I choose. His home is a village in India, a country whose poverty my husband has seen first hand. I choose him.
We turn our backs to the display as we complete our paperwork. It's easier not to look at the faces left waiting beside the dirty water.
Saturday evening we trek back to the store. Daughter1 is now in town and she's heard from her sister about the children in the store. My tender hearted first born girl needs to see the pictures and the dirty water too. She is full of resolve. She selects a boy from Kenya whose biography tells us that he has no parents. He has a sponsor now.
We cannot take them all I tell my daughters with the teary eyes and the aching hearts. But we can take these three.
Resolution. A firm decision to do or not do something.
For more information or to sponsor a child please visit World Vision online. This post is part of today's One Word blog carnival...visit Peter Pollack's blog to read more posts on this week's word-resolution.
