I wanted to write about our last journeys. 

Instead I’ve had this growing in my heart. 

From the deep places comes my lament. 

It’s a cry to all the brokenness I see around me. 

**************

I’ve read different definitions of compassion fatigue. 

Some call it the cost of caring. 

I don’t have all the answers.

I do know that it’s too much to think that we can hear hard stories day after day and not be affected.

I was sitting with a beautiful young mother casually chatting about life.

  I asked how she really was. 

She told me that often two days would pass and she had no food for her children. 

I had wondered why they couldn’t sit still when they came with us to church.

What seemed like wild hyperactive children was because they were driven crazy by their hunger.   

She told me she’d take a stick and chase them away from home.

She couldn’t bear to listen to their cries for food all day long.

She disliked herself for not being a good mother. 

That night, as I was eating, my own supper had no taste.

****************

There’s the teenage boy who comes to our gate day after day. 

He has so many problems at home.

No one, it seems, can figure out how to really help him. 

He’s one of the many who fall between the cracks in their own society.

I feel angry that there’s no better solution for these children.

He’s too old for any orphanage and too young to be fending for himself on the streets. 

 We feel caught in the middle.

It’s hard to know how to love the child, his angry step father and terrified mother. 

Every child needs a family.

Every child needs a safe place.

Last week he told me he sleeps in the bush because he doesn’t want to go home.

I asked why his eyes were bloodshot.

I hoped he wasn’t falling prey to the drug peddlers looking for lost and lonely children to do their footwork.

He said he couldn’t sleep because of the hyenas.

We’ve seen them ourselves roaming long after dark in the field across from the game park. 

That night I woke up hours before it was time for the new day.

It seemed I could see glowing eyes in the dark.

I whispered more than one prayer for his safety.

 It was a long time till I could fall back to sleep. 

************

My husband comes home.

The stack of requests on his desk is large.

Much larger, it always seems, than the hours in his day to process them.

He has his own stories.

There’s the mother who desperately needs a surgery for her son.

She doesn’t have the money.

The doctor assured her it would be ok.

She just needed to sleep with him and there would be no bill. 

A doctor should do no harm.

****************

I’ve lost count of the children who aren’t in school because they don’t have the fees.

There’s never an easy answer.

I can’t believe that I just seem to stand by watching.

In the past months inflation has more than doubled the price of so many staple foods.

 I’ve read that one-third of the rising Kenyan middle class is slipping back into poverty. 

In northern Kenya the worst drought in 40 years has forced families to walk

miles to find water for their animals. There’s so many mouths to feed.

More girls are being forced to marry at at the young ages of 9, 10, and 11. 



 The promised dowry that adds animals to the dwindling herds is a lifeline.

Maybe the family can survive just a bit longer through the relentless lack rains. 

In our more urban areas many families are happy to eat just one meal a day.

One mother sits across from me and cries.

Her struggles just keep increasing.

She wonders if it is really worth it to keep living.

Her bright eyed ten year old daughter happily runs in the yard.

She tells me she knows she needs to keep living because of her. 

I prayed with her before she left that day.

I had to remind myself that it wasn’t just a trivial offering.

No one ever wants to see innocence suffer. 

It’s not easy to stand by and and watch an humanitarian crisis slowly unfold before your eyes. 

***************

I want to be like Jesus.

I want to always be moved with compassion when I see someone’s needs. 

I’d love to be like the apostles.

I’d love to be able to lay hands on the sick so they can be healed. 

I wish I’d never need to feel guilty.

I wish that I never missed a call from a scared child in the middle of the night.

I remind myself that I’m human.

And that even the Divine allowed himself to rest from his labors. 

I don’t have all the solutions.

I just ask God to increase my faith. Even in the midst of all the darkness I know and want to believe Jesus’ light will always be there. 

Sometimes I wonder “Lord, how long?”

I’m grateful for the gift God has given me.

It’s a privilege to walk in my own way with His hurting children.

Together we’re all the broken.

We all have need of Jesus. 

I don’t want to ever lose my ability to cry.

I don’t want to lose sight of what really grieves the heart of God. 

I’m so grateful for the beauty in my life.

I’m grateful to be able to feel even though sometimes it just really hurts.

Tonight I see Jesus standing and looking down.

I don’t understand why the world is full of so much sadness.

I know He see it all.

I know it grieves His heart.

I’m thankful for the body of believers all over the world.

I’m thankful for those who pray and hold up the hands that sometimes feel weak. 

I’d love to know what you’ve learned.

How has God shown you to love others well even in the hardest places?

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.”

Psalms 27:13

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