Break My Heart for What Breaks Yours

James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Entry from September 9/20/07

Today was the toughest day yet. Today we went to visit and pray with the sick children at the government hospital.
We first went to the babies room. Fortunately all their mothers were there caring for them, but many had been there for months. Many of them have pneumonia and both mothers and children were fatigued by the long hospital visit. I felt God pulling on my to pray with them and talk with them. This was really pushing me out of my shell. I tried not to at first, but couldn't ignore the responsibility. I prayed for four babies and their moms by myself. I'm glad I could do this small thing for them.
Then this hospital visit got exponentially harder as we went down to the very last room- the abandoned baby room. One baby was only seven days old and was found in a dumpster! Another had been there fore a month or so. (She was so chubby and cute! :) )
There were two boys in cribs who seemed somewhat mentally disabled. This one boy was so happy for attention. He kept giving me thumbs up, high-fives, and he always smiled. His smile was so beautiful, regardless of the fact that almost all his teeth were rotten. He also had very crooked pinkies. I kept giving him stickers and he kept on smiling.
There were also three other boys in the room. (I wish I could describe for you this place. It is certainly not the children's wing in a U.S. hospital. Picture a movie with a scene from a mid-centruy mental institute, from the bland, dreary atmosphere, blank walls, white metal bed posts, and scratchy gray blankets complete with holes.) The one in the middle bed was slightly shy but responded to the stickers. I gave him high-fives and tickled him. He laughed and it was fun. Mary translated for me and we found out from him that his stomach hurt. He said he lived with his dad, but his dad wasn't there. He thought his father would come tomorrow, but at the discussion of this the boy started to cry. Mary told him that Jesus would be with him. He started to cry more... MY HEART BROKE COMPLETELY NOW... I wanted to cry so bad with him. To pick him up from his scratchy-gray-institute-blankets and hold him... but God actually helped me hold it together. I was so thankful that I was was able to get him to smile again by being silly. I gave him and his neighbor sheets of stickers and we left. The hardest part was leaving. Leaving and knowing that they'd been left before, knowing that there really wasn't much we could do for them at the moment. I was an emotional wreck and as we got back to the hotel room, I laid on my bed and had a very emotional cry.

I wonder what God sees when He knows these children are hurting- they are His children and this world is not fair to them. I do know that He is intimately aware of everything on their hearts.
Psalm 56:8
⁸ You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.

As painful as it was for me to see these children and so many others we met in Africa, I know it is painful for God. We often ask God to give us His heart, to break our hearts for what breaks His... this is what this hospital visit did for me. His love extends to much greater lengths than ours ever could. I don't want any child to ever go through life not feeling loved, that's my personal agenda. I have a very strong feeling that this is God's heart too...

Will you help me get to Africa so I can be His arms to all the orphaned children He puts in my path? Please, please consider partnering with me monthly so I can be there by August! bethanneyoung@gmail.com