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I'm all cozied up at the Starnes' tonight, because sometimes I just need to remember what it feels like to be part of a family in a house full of people...so I get in my car and come here for a night or so. I've spent the day working on various to-do list items, and now the house is quiet and all the littles are in bed. I went out and got some wood, started a fire, brewed a cup of peppermint tea, and sat down with a new book. I finished Wobegon earlier today. I left home yesterday knowing I'd probably finish it so I tossed the next book in my purse just for good measure. There's always reading to be done. I'm about a fifth of the way through now, and I am absolutely convinced you need to read this book. It is a collection of essays, compiled by Hope Through Healing Hands, and it was given to me at the Mobilizing Medical Missions conference last weekend when I attended a seminar on Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy in the Developing World. The essays are written by men and women from vast and varied callings, occupations, and places in the world--all uniting under one banner: Worldwide Maternal and Infant Health. Jim Wallis, Jenny Allen, Natalie Grant, Tony Campolo, Rachel Held Evans, Jennifer Nettles, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu...the list approaches fifty unique voices and writing styles.  As a future midwife, I have a unique calling into the world of maternal and infant health, but I believe each of us is called to care about this issue, no matter our other unique callings or occupations. One of my greatest passions is teaching & mobilizing. I have this constant nagging voice that says you can help a few--maybe a thousand--but if instead you teach & mobilize a few--a thousand--to teach a few, a thousand more...the impact will be a million-fold. So when I read David Steven's essay "Transforming the World," I got so excited. He and one nurse convinced a few local Kenyan volunteers to become Community Health Leaders. They were then each asked to recruit 7 volunteers to be trained under them, to go into the villages (each volunteer covered 100 huts) and encourage every household to change FIVE behavioral health practices (build a latrine, eliminate standing water, immunize their children, space their pregnancies, and have a source of clean water). The organization now reaches a million people through local volunteer efforts and has SINGLEHANDEDLY eliminated many of the preventable diseases Dr. Stevens was treating in his mission hospital just five years ago. You guys. We do not have to be paralyzed by the needs in the world. Get your feet wet Upstream, roll in the mud a little Downstream--we need people of all kinds in both places. The one place we are forbidden by God is the place of indifference. When the earthquake stuck Haiti in 2010, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and 1.5 million people were made homeless. The downstream people raced around Port-au-Prince in all sorts of fashion and many others flew in from all ends of the earth. And they did what they could to help injured people strewn all over Port. And the upstreamers sat at home or in their university offices and determined that the earthquake DIDN’T really kill people and make them homeless. They determined that bad construction, faulty zoning, widespread corruption, and a feudal land owning system were the culprits. We have such immense resources at our disposal, and I'm not merely talking financial/tangible resources. We have educated minds; the ability to make choices; encouragement and support systems that enable us to keep going when the going gets tough. These are intangible resources that people in developing nations often go without. Most of the time, they want to help their own people--they are plenty motivated. If we can teach them how, and give them the resources to do it, they will. They're humans just like us--what they lack is not character, stamina, willpower, or diligence. Many times, they simply lack the knowledge (education) of how to improve their conditions; many other times, they lack adequate tangible resources. To illustrate this point, I'll share an excerpt from Jenni Allen: I have a good friend named FeeFee in Haiti. She pops popcorn every day for her kids. I pop popcorn for my kids when they come home from school. She pops popcorn and sells it bag by bag for her kids to be able to go to school. FeeFee's kids don't need sponsorship. She's taking are of them. What FeeFee needs is not for us to come in and rescue her with our money.  That we have an opportunity to be a part of sustainable and worthwhile solutions excites me. However, when I think of all the different sorts of lives I could live in the next 70 years, there is one that seems to keep threatening to wrap its tangly tentacles around my soul: The Life of Comfort, with The {The Illusion of} Safety. Pretty soon, I'll be making a decent living. I'll have a lot of options regarding how I do life. My prayer is that I never settle into comfort and that when I do, God will make me uncomfortable very quickly. Comfort is my idol, and it's a subtle one. But extravagant love isn't usually very comfortable. It looks a lot like loving enemies and risking humiliation and embracing the fact that the world is NOT safe and that my life is not more valuable than my neighbor's. I saw Bob Goff a few times last weekend, and he kept reminding us: "You don't save people to Jesus. Jesus saves people to Jesus." THAT is freeing me. Jesus saves people. Period. All my little boxes of safety and comfort and saying the right things at the right times--I can be free from all of that. I don't have to worry. I'm asked to love extravagantly, sacrificially, and then wait for Jesus Christ Himself to open blind eyes and soften hard hearts. And so, I am free to live on mission and to make a dent in the preventable problems plaguing our kind. So are you. I think if we start with Mothers (and I believe every woman, childless or childbearing, has a Mother's heart), we'll watch a world of healing unfold begin to grow...igniting Life. 
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I cannot recall the last time I resolved to begin something upon the start of a new year. This year, however, I am making three changes. It's the second Monday of 2016, and I decided today was the day to announce my resolutions: 1) flossing my teeth every night (dentist said so; fine.) 2) drinking a full glass of water as soon as I get out of bed every morning (you'd be amazed at the health effects this has--it is single handedly changing the way my body feels before breakfast & coffee) 3) keeping my phone away from my bed; to this effect, I have purchased an alarm clock, with nature sounds (because it's replacing my beloved Sleep Cycle app). After searching far and wide, I found this at target for $12, and I am so happy I can't even stand it. It was the last one on the shelf, and the docking station is for an iPhone 4 (nearly obsolete), so I think that's why it was so cheap. I couldn't find an alarm clock with nature sounds ANYWHERE for less than $40. I've got an iPhone 5, so the dock won't work for me! BOO YAH! My aversion to having a smart phone near my bed paid off, literally. There is something to be said for NOT having my phone screen be the last thing I see before falling asleep and the first thing I see upon waking up. I've resolved to awaken, drink my water, brush my teeth, read the Word, and do my other necessary morning tasks before picking up my phone this year. I'm so serious.  |
hey, i'm jordan.i write here because i think our words are worth sharing. Archives
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