Overwhelming

Do you remember those magnetic “How are you feeling today?” boards that were a big hit for awhile? My mom still has one in the office at our house. I’m wondering if there is one that says overwhelmed. I think I feel this emotion on a daily basis. In an effort to avoid that feeling, kind of a self defense almost, I become numb.

This week, Nsoko hosted an ambassador team. Pastor Gift has been gone for the past two weeks and so we were “in charge” of the set up for this week. PG told us what he thought they should do, so we did that. I stayed with one small team of three (with a translator and me it became 5).

All week long we were visiting a sick woman and her family. Her husband died a few years ago and she has four children. Two girls, two boys. Their mother is being treated for TB and this week we took her to the clinic to get medicine for sores in her throat. I don’t think she has been tested but it’s quite obvious that she has AIDS. The youngest is 15 months old and has sores all over his body, of course we can’t be sure unless he is tested but I’m almost certain that he too has HIV/AIDS.

One of the high school girls, Katherine, turned to me after the woman walked back into her house to get some food for the young boy and said; “This is so overwhelming. She has AIDS; her baby probably does as well. Who will take care of the kids when she is gone?” I thought for a moment about how to answer her. Kim, an adult on the trip, asked Katherine if she was ok. Katherine replied that she was and then turned to me and said “I don’t know how you do this everyday”. I quickly thought, well I don’t. I don’t always let myself feel the burdens of those around me because if I did then I too would be overwhelmed within a week or less. I don’t have that kind of love to pour out continuously. In the end I said this to Katherine. “This is overwhelming but I think the real tragedy comes when it isn’t overwhelming to you anymore. So don’t stop feeling.”

As I’ve thought about it more, I realize that I don’t have that kind of love but Jesus does. I don’t have the ability to bring grace, but he does. I can’t look at a dying mother in Swaziland and tell her there is hope, but he can. People in Africa know him, they’ve been hearing about him for years. What they need, what all of us need, is more of him.

I’ve been hearing this for months now. What people need is more of Jesus and almost every time I get frustrated because I either don’t know what that means in a particular situation or think that it can’t be that simple. The problems that we encounter here are almost always complex and anything but simple. Starving babies, uneducated children, prostitute teenage mothers, HIV/AIDS infected adults, and grandparents bearing the weight of it all.

In the midst of that, I think we need to understand that when we see people suffering, when we ourselves are suffering, that he hurts too. He longs to be close to us, he tells us he will provide for us. Not always in the way that we expect. Sometimes we as Americans play a hand in that, sometimes we don’t. Jesus didn’t heal every time and he actually escaped fairly often to be with the Father; to pray for those around him, to pray for himself. Life here on Earth isn’t easy, it isn’t fair and it isn’t ok but that’s why the Father sent his son. He knew we would need him.