Baby Bergly: Choosing To Fight Anyway

No matter how many miracles (on every scale) that we witness on a daily basis – whenever a rescue doesn’t end in success it is painful. It is painful because in choosing to fight for a child’s life we are choosing to be attached. To love. To go all in. Even when it doesn’t look promising. Even when it doesn’t even look hopeful. Aware of the potential pain in hopes of the potential success. And choosing to fight anyway.

Tonight my heart isn’t hurting for Bergly.

It actually makes me smile a little knowing that he has no more exhausted cries that sound like light little hums or emotional meltdowns (on his behalf) to get any kind of food into his belly. At two years old Bergly weighed only 11 lbs. (ya that’s right, what you probably weighed at birth) and any sense of exerted energy was just about too much for his little body to handle without a nap. And when I say exerted energy I mean swatting my hands away for too long and/or thinking of strategic ways to get the food out of his mouth before I got it back in. It really took it out of the little fella.

Tonight my heart is not hurting for him, but for his young mother who is about to receive news that her baby died. That she won’t even able to be there, to say goodbye, or to grieve at a burial. Just continue on with life as usual, as if he never was. My heart is hurting because I can not even imagine how her heart will be hurting.

I am grateful, however, that along with the news of baby Bergly’s passing we are able to sincerely say that he didn’t go down without a fight. That there were many people working on his behalf… staying up nights and monitoring him each day. Interceding on his behalf to the God who created him and numbered his days. There were people caring for him and loving him and taking care of his mother and brother. I am grateful for The Real Hope for Haiti and how they were willing to take him on, knowing his severity, and fight for him until the very last moment.

Bergly is only one of many stories of complications within malnutrition. The inevitable effects of a food crisis, a country in crisis, and a family in crisis. Stories like his are taking place many times every minute. Unknown names. Unknown faces. So often fading from this earth only known and loved by Jesus. One more reason I am so grateful to all who are making it possible for Danita to make our Medical Center a reality. So Mom’s like Bergly’s don’t have to spend the rest of her life wondering what her baby boy would have grown up to be like.

Psalm 34:18 “Our Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and he saves those who are crushed in their spirits.

Our Lord is always with us, but especially close in the moments that break our hearts. And tonight my broken hearted prayer is for Bergly’s mom. That she would find peace within the tragic reality and pain of losing a child after two years of a desperate struggle, and that she would know that God hears her hurt and He is present… even when she can’t identify Him.

… and that her sweet baby boy is safe, happy, and whole.

Advertisement

Life is Hard. God is Love.

My day started off praying to God about my life in another part of this world, on behalf of uncertain and undesirable situations that are uncontrolled by everyone involved. My day continued praying to God about the uncertain and undesirable situations in my grasp right now, today.

My consistent prayer: to provide peace, enlightenment and rest to my family and to those in this life who hold no control.

My consistent thought: life is hard

It’s hard no matter where you live. It’s hard no matter what your name is or what your list of assets look like. It’s hard for me with the uncertainties of learning God’s character and walking the uncertainties of this life in faith, as it is hard for the man sitting in a corner office feeling like there is nothing to live for, to the homeless woman who brings her baby each day, who sleeps on the streets of Haiti each night, her life containing three children and an orange water jug.

I can’t image what this hard life would look like without anchoring to something bigger than myself. Without the certainty that comes from my God, who encompasses all love, reminding me that I hold a hope in Him that would anchor my soul. Because within these hard days sometimes that’s all there is to hang on to.

Hang on and remember:

that He is working on our behalf.

That God is love.

And

that this too shall pass.

Day 1

My NYE dates: I’ve seen these girls just about everyday for the 365 days in 2012.

New Year’s Eve.

No fireworks.(Heard them across the river – does that count?)

No sequins covered outfit.(pouting)

No kiss (unless kisses goodnight to the babies counts??!!).

However, another year down and another exciting one ahead – cheers to living the unknown! It’s hard for a type A person such as myself to even choke down a phrase like that – progress people… this is a picture of progress.

It’s just after 12 AM and my thoughts are so consumed with what has been and what is to be.

I started this year in Haiti, at Danita’s Children. 12:00AM – located on the couch of the girl’s orphanage to be exact. So tired from a full-on dance party that it was a feat to even stay up until midnight. When I finally got a moment to stop, a baby in my lap, we were both down for the count pretty quickly.

I remember waking up the next morning, January 1, 2012, feeling like this was a pretty cool place to begin a new year. And that I should cook some black eyed peas. Because you know you’re supposed to eat black eyed peas on the first day of a new year.

Doesn’t everyone do that? Or is that just MY Grandma?

2012 was so full of nothing that I thought, yet so full of everything that God knew that I needed.

 

This time last year I was adjusting to a new home. A new country. A new culture. A new lifestyle. I was far away from everything that is secure, and so excited for every day’s new adventure. I’m so grateful for the heartache, the hardships, and the headaches that came along with it.

On a long list of a full year, I can definitely say that this year:

I learned what the true meaning of value is.

The true picture of grace.

The true testament of faithfulness.

  

As I look through 2012 photos of tragic stories and beautiful miracles, of lessons that I still don’t understand – that will travel a lifetime with me – and of heroic people who will never be known, I am honored that God trusted me enough to be a part of the story, and overwhelmed at what He has shown me about the character of my God, His faithfulness, and His never ending pursuit of me.

 

 Although continually watching suffering and injustice is never easy, seeing God’s beauty in it’s mists is something that I can still never fully describe.

Even in the moments, as right now, where I am just at a blank – on my life, my future, my next 5 minutes – I feel like I continue to remain in such an intense place of gratitude. Gratitude that I continue to walk in God’s presence and mercy every day. That for the past 365 days I have learned more about who God is and how, as much as I want to make my own plans for my life, it’s really not about me at all.

Thank you to those who helped me get here, help me continue here, and help me to remain sane in the middle of my momentary lapses in identity.

WORD to a FRESH 2013! Isaiah 54: I am preparing to stretch! My house… my heart… my spirit… because I want it all! It makes NO rational sense. But who asked for life to make sense?

Happy 2013!

2013 PREP

… I pray, I fast, I tell God all about it… but all in all… this is what it’s all about!

I’m excited.

Go To The Well & You Will Thirst No More.

I’ve been in Haiti for almost a year now, and the more I get to know these people, their stories, their families, the more they have become my friends and neighbors, the more my heart is burdened for my home and American society as a whole. We’ve really missed it. And not because we are blessed, because pleasure of this world are from the Lord. But because our hearts are in the wrong position.

These people who have nothing. And yet they have everything. They literally have nothing – no food, no water, no shelter, no education. I can’t imagine the anxiety that wrestles in their daily thoughts. They go to bed every night knowing they will not have enough. Burdened that their children will once again go to bed with hunger pains. And yet they are so full of joy and contentment and faith that Jesus knows right where they are.

This makes it hard for me to see our lives in America and not just be frustrated with all that I deemed so important for so long. We are consumed with what we don’t have. We have all this “stuff”…. just “stuff”, and yet our souls have nothing. What is “stuff”, what is money, what is status, what is a nice car when our souls are longing, day after day, in a silent desperation for something more?

Something deeper. Something to move us, compel us, or drive us to a place of compassion.

This is what Matthew is saying in chapter 10 when he says that we shouldn’t worry about what can kill our flesh, but rather what will kill our souls to hell.

I agree that people’s needs must be met. God provides for His people through us. But if all we give them is food and water, then they will return again tomorrow with an empty plate. However, if we meet the needs of their soul at the same time, then they will find themselves never thirsty again – a hope that remains as an anchor (Hebrews 6:11) in the darkest of days.

It’s really not that deep. When the opportunity presents itself within your circle of influence – take them to the well, and show them the water.

And I’m not referring to those serving in developing countries. I’m talking about at home, where the desperation and darkness is suffocating. IN THE PLACES YOU GO EVERDAY, where so many that you may never suspect are silently desperate.

And then be grateful for all that you have, shifting your heart away from any lack.

Our God is good. And oh, so faithful!

Remaining Aware

This bracelet was a gift after four years of driving myself crazy with late nights, text books and exams. It is now beat up, tarnished and scratched beyond belief; however, it remains on my arm each day to remind me that I am in this moment on purpose and to look for the beauty within it. For those moments hold the essence of my life.

It is so easy sometimes to become consumed with the anxieties of this life that we forget to remain aware of what God is doing. He is writing a beautiful story within those seemingly crazy  moments.

Don’t miss it. Enjoy the ride. Embrace the journey.

So, a friendly public service announcement: Have a great weekend and always remain aware of your journey!

Provision: A birds of the air kind of thing.

Disclosure: So I know that when we give to others our left hand shouldn’t know what our right hand is doing and all, but in light of finding perspective in all sorts of ways this week, this one is worth sharing.

As the year is coming to an end my mind has been dwelling – knowing that God is faithful and my provider and that He will provide ALL my needs in abundance – on raising money for support next year and how it will all work out and just concerned with having enough.

Oh, God’s reassurance is always on time.

So, I was exercising outside, listening to a podcast, and you know, just dying in general. When I say exercising I mean going for an hour in circles around the perimeter of the 6-foot wall that outlines my house. The community isn’t the safest for an American girl who sticks out like a sore thumb to be running around all alone (not that walking to the bank or the store all alone is any different, but that not the topic here, all you safety police out there) so I stick to my little hamster on a wheel routine while my Rottweiler waits until I get around the corner and then tries to race me down the alley/knock me over/run between my legs, or some variety of that sort.

Anywho, as I made my way around I saw Watson, a street kid in my neighborhood, standing at my front gate. Watson is a Haitian kid who now lives in Dajabon after his mother died, leaving him orphaned. I’m not sure a lot about his life, where he sleeps or even how I came to know this kid, but I see him each day in town, buy him food every now and then, a haircut, let him help me walk home with my groceries, talk with him, pray with him or just slap him a high five on my way past his “post” aka begging corner.

I stopped, trying to catch my breath, while Watson became embarrassed, probably wondering why I was running, or really probably more like who I was running from, and in Creole said,

“Hi, Mami. I needed to talk to you and knew I could find you here.”

Okay, so real talk. I’m not gonna lie – in the moment I was thinking how it really wasn’t a great time due to the massive amounts of sweat and dehydration that were taking place, but I pulled my headphones down and walked over.

“Alright, Watson. Why did you need to talk with me?”

And then, almost simultaneously, as I was thinking all of my selfish thoughts about how I couldn’t breathe, I knew I was about to get a heart check:

“Well…. because I’m hungry.”

The thought alone of how many long it has been since his last meal is enough, but not to mention that he came to find me – knowing there was hope if he was successful.

I brought him back $5 USD and told him to get dinner and then save the rest for food the next day, and that before he eats he needs to thank Jesus for this money because He is the one who gave it to him.

It made me wonder how long he had been concerned, in the same way that I have been, about where he would find provision – the amount is irrelevant –  and our Father knew all along.

^{Matthew 6:26 “}Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

Watson looked at me with an unexplainable expression that I know will hold in my heart forever, knowing that he will not go to sleep hungry tonight, and immediately all of my concerns turned into overwhelming, tear filled, gratitude as I watched Watson walk around the corner with $5 in his hand, he and I feeling the exact same way in that moment – completely provided for.

Just another one of those reminders that I am taken care of by my Father and confident that there is always enough to share with someone else.

Beauty In Suffering

Laundry Day.

In Haiti there are greater needs than I can explain. There is poverty and sickness and desperation. There are children without parents, there are parents with no resources and there is extreme need from coast to coast. Some days, as these people become my neighbors and my friends, that I just look around me as I walk through the village and know that there is no way that I could ever understand what this life is like. To only know a life of constant struggle.

For 10 months I have not been able to accurately convey the essence of what remains in this land of suffering that I live in.

Until last month while I was in Texas visiting my family. I was rather anxious, knowing that on Sunday I would be able to visit a church that has remained a significant part of my “story” of walking with Christ.

My family was a part of this community at it’s inception – when service was in a home, and then later when it was in a room that is probably now a nursery or storage closet or something. I hadn’t been there in, gosh, ages… 13 years at least. However, for all those years in between, anytime I was among anything resembling ministry, it always had big shoes to fill, from my warm memories of this gym turned church.

Even when I was in my late teens, moved to Florida, and found the community that changed every piece of who I am, and that I now call my home church, I remember describing this place to my parents as – “It reminds me of Grace.”

Okay, so sorry for the nostalgic rabbit trail, but the point is that more than 13 years later, after I found God to be my own, I was returning to this place that I always identified Christ in, even before I truly knew what I was identifying.

As Steve opened the message, he shared this story about a man who called him merely months into his position as pastor, and told him that a little girl just passed away at five years old and they needed his help. He went on to discuss how, as a new pastor, he had no idea how to handle the situation, but that he has since learned that there is a certain sweetness in these moments of tragedy that are only captivated when compassion is the only answer.

Of all the days for me to visit, it was this day that he shared this story about the man and the little girl and the sweetness. All of it actually ironic because this man, the one in the story, is in fact my family, and the little girl, who died of pneumonia at five years old, is my cousin, and the rest of the message – about the sweetness in moments of tragedy was exactly the words that I have been trying to convey for 10 months, about my life in Haiti.

Junette, one of the children at our orphanage, visiting the elderly community.

Truly, there is something to be said of this poverty and suffering, as there is an emmense beauty that we lose at home when using Jesus only as an option. However, it is in suffering that we have the honor of seeing the hand of our God at work. We see His great compassion through those who labor in His name, His promises are kept to His children and His faithfulness is revealed. Everyday.

In the big things.

In the little things.

Faithfully.

So everyday, as I am surrounded by great suffering, I choose to count it as beautiful, because it is in that suffering that there lies a sweetness of God’s provision, that is so easily overlooked when we have other options.

Remember that next time you come upon a situation of suffering, and you have the opportunity to make it a little more beautiful.

And to anyone looking for a church to call home in East Texas, please visit Grace Community Church in Greenville. Even 13 plus years later, I can still clearly identify God there – among the lights and the smiles and the electric guitars. And thanks Steve, for helping me find my words.

Thoughts For The Night: Capacities of Unknown Love

“It’s your unlimited power to care and to love that can

make the biggest difference in the quality of your life.” – Anthony Robbins

There is this reoccurring comment that I always hear when women have babies – that they knew they would love their baby, but they never knew that they would love them like this.

        

I didn’t exactly “get it” until I moved to Haiti and realized that there is something to be said about this love that allows me to love children who are not my own. Not just love them, but feel a way that I didn’t know possible. I never knew that this capacity of love existed within my heart. I didn’t know that I was capable of it.

I find myself burdened deep in my spirit by the things that burden them.

The big things that changed their lives forever and the small things that seem to be changing their lives for a moment (because to them, it’s all that important).

I know what it feels like for someone to love me that way. By choice. And the impact that it had on my life will never be fully known.

Photo by GivenPhotography

And most, I am overwhelmed at the fact that this capacity never finds it’s limit.

Just when I think I’m loving a lot, a little Haitian kid comes crawling into my lap and all is right with the world again. I begin to causally pray and I hurt knowing the things that are hurting them.

This is the love that Christ called “unfailing.”

And it is THIS that I never want to forget.

I am 24 years old, I am not married, and I have no children. But I can confidently tell you that in this moment, as my heart is overwhelmed beyond expression, that I am currently experiencing motherhood.

And it is changing my life.

Depths of Gratitude

Whoa, nelly – who has been way blog absent? Yes, I know what you’re thinking – you missed me so much, right?

I’ve been spending every recent moment soaking in all the moments that I can with close friends who have stood the test of time and my wonderful family, who I always feel 17 around again.

Right now I’m preparing to head back to my home – North East Haiti.

Sigh. Life is so funny right now.

I remember the first time that someone told me that my life would change most from the age of 20-25. I was on a tour bus in Israel, and that person has since become an essential part of that process. And, I’ve heard that same statements hundreds of times since then.

During these critical years, full of decisions and adventures and mistakes which I will later blame on “being young”, I continually find myself in moments with God where my heart is just so overwhelmed with gratitude.

He truly spoils me.

When I think of the immense detail that He has orchestrated for me to walk out I can do nothing but cry. Literally. Right now I am sitting on a flight and I put my glasses on – *side note below – to cover my watery eyes and continue to dwell on the power of Christ on the human heart. It has completely changed every desire that I thought was important and brought perspective to every trial that I considered too hard.

As I am continually in this state, and trying to express my heart to my Father, I just can’t get passed “Thank You”.

Thank You.

For my family.

For my life.

For his grace in my humanity.

For the fact that He knows the plan He has for me since before I was born, even when I seem to have forgotten it.

I can never get over the fact that I get to be me. And THAT is something that I find priceless.

His blessings are more than I can ask for. And I’m just so darn grateful.

*Side Note: Yes people – I had to get glasses! I made all my routine medical appointments this time around, and one of them was to the eye doctor. I’ve always had great eye sight (I guess carrots really do work) so you can imagine my surprise (actually, I gasped out loud) when the lady asked me to read the bottom line and I couldn’t even make out the first letter. I acted all cool like I just had a momentary lapse of focus and began to read: “1, 2…” when she interrupted with – “If it helps, they’re all letters.” Oh, no she didn’t. I know exactly what you’re thinking, because it is exactly what I was thinking: RUDE! So, needless to say, I hit up the Lense Crafters special of 50% off frames and sunglasses… what, what!

Also needless to say, I don’t care what the rules are, I will only be wearing these bad boys while working on the computer or late at night. Or apparently when I don’t want people to see my crying. So there – take that stupid eyeglasses!