What the North did to Me

One week ago I stood under the darkened sky in the backwoods of Canada taking the crisp air of our last night in the North. Stars twinkled over a tiny village of 600 people. Beautiful were the stars, but the lives of many of the village people were anything but beautiful. Ugly and harsh seemed was the world of these people.

 Tonight as I sit in my comfortable air conditioned living room I wonder about the little girl with the spunky smile. She was the one who told me how her mother almost killed herself with a shotgun. Those words smoothly spilled off her lips as if she was telling me her favorite color.  When  darkness began to fall I asked if maybe she should go home so her mother wouldn’t worry. No she told me it didn’t matter because her mother was drinking and she never went home when her mother was drunk and no she wouldn’t go to her father’s either because likely he would be just as drunk. Young, but not too young to manage her own accommodations for the night. Old enough to know that she better stay away from her parents when they were drinking for her own safety.

The little child knew so much, yet seemed so astounded when I told her how God had actually made man out of dirt. I wonder if when she is around her intoxicated parents if she will remember there is a great and powerful God who loves her more than anything else? Will she remember the American who hugged her tight and listened to her stories?

The next morning we packed our embarrassment of American riches into our cars. Onto the dirt road we drove leaving the little tiny village in the dust. Maybe all of my belongings made it out of the village, but a piece of my heart didn’t. Part of me broke when I journeyed North, never to be put together the same way again.

How can you sleep at night when you know there are children with silver toothed smiles who are cowering under their blankets trying to shut out frightful dreams? How do you go to church and fellowship with other believers when you know there is a lonely missionary couple longing for the sweet fellowship of other believers? How do you pick up the phone and talk to your parents when you know so many children are begging for their parents to love them?

Fix it. Do something. Give money. Write letters. Do anything. Try and do everything you possible can to make the lives of these people better, but you can’t do everything.

God will be there when those children can’t sleep at night because of unspeakable nightmares. God is there with the missionary couple who watch the fruit grow all too slowly. God is there when a drunken parent slaps their child.

I want to do everything, but in the end I have to trust God knowing He is the one who can and will do everything. Difficult….yes, but there is no other way but to trust in the One who is control.

A few days showed me things I never knew and it showed me how to trust God like never before.