thinking about haiti

Beautiful, healthy children. Good food to eat. Medical care when we need it. Clean water in abundance. Today I am hit with gratitude and wonder at all of the simple gifts we enjoy and so often take for granted. I am also filled with deep sadness for the people in a country so plagued by the kind of poverty I can hardly comprehend who are now faced with a massive disaster.

Before Tuesday, Haiti had many orphans. Now they will have so many more. Since Andrew's trip to Lithuania last summer and the death of my cousin's husband, a young dad, my heart has ached for children who have lost parents. There is the desire to "do something" mixed with the feeling that no real significance could be made by me. And so it goes with Haiti. The country is so far away, the devastation so great, the losses so huge. What can I possibly do?

And yet, if my children were in urgent need, I would move heaven and earth to help them. I long to do the same for these children - these sons and daughters - in Haiti. My husband showed me just hours after news of the quake hit that there is something we can do. He took the money out of his Paypal account (which really wasn't "much"), put it into our bank account, and donated it to World Vision.

It's true: We can forego the music purchases, skip the dinner out, wait on the new carpet, knit with the yarn we already have, and dig into our pockets a little deeper. Because there is just no tiptoeing around the fact that Haiti needs our money more right now.

If you are looking for places to give where your money will be put to use well - and quickly - these are the places we are giving:

:: World Vision - This Christian humanitarian agency has been in Haiti for 30 years and is well mobilized to make an impact with relief immediately.

:: Giving Children Hope - Four-star rated on Charity Navigator, this organization is on the ground in Haiti helping with relief and caring for children. I was so moved by the news report from Mission Viejo Christian Church on this page.

There are other good ones, too, like World Relief and Hope International. (If you know of others, feel free to share them here.)

Whether you are in a position to give monetarily or not, we can all pray, pray, pray, (specifically, we are praying for Grace Children's Hospital in Port-au-Prince, which is a major part of missions at our church and who we have not heard news about yet). And we can all give by living more thoughtfully. Not to get up on a soapbox here, but I know that I can be more generous with my resources, more grateful for my resources, and more careful about how I use my resources. It doesn't have to take a disaster to wake people up to the dire needs of others and the responsibility we have to help. But sometimes it does.