It changes you...

Being in Ethiopia changes you…  It gets in your blood.  I’ve noticed it in all the returning families.  Either a burning desire to return and help is started…  or this need to get rid of a lot of your “stuff”, or just the “missing it” feeling.  Many times a mix of all of those, sometimes one at a time… but it seems to be a definite pattern.  Why do we all feel this way?  What happens when you are there?  We have a lot of things in America, a lot of things that they don’t have in Ethiopia.  And there are definitely some things that the people in Ethiopia really should have, hence the helping (their food and medical needs met to start)…  but in the absence of having a lot of “things” they really have something we don’t…  Something that is so tough to find anywhere in America.  They are so people centered, they look AT you with genuine interest.  They go out of their way to welcome you with whatever little they have, whether they know you or not.  They know how to LOVE.  My son kisses me (and his brothers and sisters, and any visitors we have lol) hundreds of times a day.  And I can’t help but think, how many times HE must have been kissed in his short two years of life to learn to love people like that.  When you are walking down the street you see people walking with their arms around each other in genuine affection, you can’t cross paths with someone and talk longer than five mintues without being invited to stay with them and have coffee.   I find we miss it because we just don’t have that here.  We want to be submerged in that kind of love and learn how to be that kind of love.. and we also want to help provide these beautiful people with the things that they should have but do not. 

I keep thinking of where it’s lost in America.  I know for sure we are inundated with things and whether we want to or not we find security in them.  I have worked on detachment a lot, and continue to… and I honestly feel like I can’t remember the last time when I was truly upset over losing a “thing” or “something” breaking, or not been able to have this or that…  but I still am blessed to have a lot of them, I still have a security in that.  I am not forced to have faith that God will provide everything in my life (tho in reality that's the truth... but when we have it always available that realization isn't always in front of us as it should be).  I think that faith makes you a different kind of person.  I think that is where a lot of us get that temptation (And a good one I think) to get rid of some or even a lot of our stuff.  So there is less “stuff” between us and God… less “stuff” between us and people, and also aid ourselves to live that kind of faith. 

I was reading St. Teresa of Avila last night, and she was talking to the sisters about building up large homes and lots of possessions, and how they all will come down on Judgement day and think of how loud of a sound the crash of your “things” will make (majorly paraphrased LOL!).  But it really made me think… While I am not saying that we are wrong to have homes, or things to provide for our familes  AT ALL.  We need to be thanking God for these things… many families have to choose between watching their children die and placing them elsewhere so they might have a chance.  But it really sat with me, that we need to be using everything God has blessed us with for His glory…   I really hope to live a life, and pray that I live a life, that the metaphoric noise of the life we’ve lived completely drowns out the noise of the crash of all of the things we have on Judgement Day.