which reality?

Surprisingly I’ve been home for two months now! I can’t believe it!

I hear children saying how they ‘need’ a new cell phone or ipod (and they are still in elementary school!). I walk to the full fridge and pantry yet can’t seem to find anything to eat… oh how things have changed over the last couple of months! There is a part of me that would like to say that I no longer hear the harsh realities coming through my head, but I can’t. My memories are enough to haunt my American thoughts, yet I also have the blogs of the World Racers and the people I worked with to continue to keep me from forgetting. . .

It’s not so much the pictures that ‘bring me back’ to Swaziland, but the stories that no-one should ever have to tell. . . one of the blogs that a World Racer, Brady, wrote has been reposted by many friends – she revealed the fact that although these children might not be starving, part of their childhood has been taken away because they are responsible for all the children who are younger than them – she used the example of a four year old little girl who would care for her 2 year old brother (the two of them were some of my favorite kids, and we even got to the point where we could play with the brother while the sister sang silly songs with the other children!). And then there was the blog posted by Seth – one of the World Race teams was out doing ministry in the area I was working in and found a four-week old baby laying on its dead mother (the team is taking care of the baby until they can get it to the abandoned baby ward at the hospital – and we also work with a ministry that takes care of abandoned babies and then gets them adopted by local Africans).

I still don’t know what the Lord has in store for me, but this I do know Swaziland wrecked me to a whole new level. I will never be able to forget the faces or the statistics that are destroying the nation. God will never again allow me to live in my own reality.