Something Different

July 8th (Thursday) 2010

9:59 p.m.

"My heart feels as if it has broken out of my ribcage and is spilled over the endless roads, fields, hills, and poverty stricken people of this country. Oh my gosh, the people! The gypsies! They are an incredible race. Yesterday, the Bible Study we attended fell through because nearly the entire village was so hungry that they had all went into the forest in search of mushrooms to eat. The mushrooms here are gas-y and gross; but that the only edible thing they can afford. (Mainly because it's free.)

In the past twenty-three days I have seen hungry children sing and dance. I have seen orphans with the ever present possibility of being turned out of their only place they can call home loom over them as they play and embrace one another. I have seen young sisters begging, shoeless and their holey garments hanging off their skinny frames. I have seen too much.

"The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." -Psalm 34:2

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." -Psalm 147:3

One morning, a week or so later, while I was praying and my heart was heavy, the Lord led me to Psalm 113:7-9. It was morning and I was sitting silently on a hill as the sun rose over the villages beneath me. The verse says, "He lifts the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the garbage heap. He seats them with influential leaders of his people. He makes a mother who is in a childless home a joyful mother." I was reminded that even when no one seemed to care or see, our Father saw and cared. Just because no one else seemed to noticed the broken old grandmother begging on the corner, she wasn't unnoticed. Even when no one was holding and playing with the Posmus children underneath the trees, they weren't unloved. Our Father in Heaven has watched over them since the day they were conceived and He will continue to until they breathe their last breath. My leaving Romania wouldn't change that.

And after that, I could bare leaving. For a time...