Parched.

I have two half written posts about cute things The Son has done and adorable pictures to illustrate them.  Every time I sit down to finish writing one…something keeps popping up in my head.  Every time I have any quiet time, something keeps nagging me.  Maybe if I tell you about it, maybe if I get it out somewhere besides just my brain, maybe then I can be okay with the knowledge that I do not think there is anything I can do.

Have a couple of pictures of my darling son for those of you who could care less about the inner working of my brain.  Check back in a day or so and I will have a charming anecdote for  you.

When I was about five or six years old we lived a small town in a poverty stricken state.  While we were by  no means wealthy, in that particular poor town we were considered to be part of the upper class.  I was just old enough to understand why not many of my friends had the same things I did.   Around this same time I started sitting down and watching the news with my dad when he came home from work.   I saw pictures like this night after night that would stay even when I squeezed my eyes shut.

(photo credit here)  Scroll back up and look at those pictures of The Son again.  These two children are the same age.

One afternoon before dinner I asked my mom for an empty jar.   I colored a little label for it that read ” Money for hungry children in Africa.”  (only I am certain at least half of the words were misspelled) and demanded that everybody start putting their spare change in my jar every night before we ate.  That lasted three days tops.  I seem to remember my mom telling me to dump the whole jar in the offering plate at church and that God would make sure the money went where He wanted it to be.    I was a small child.  I forgot my new found passion and went back to only caring about a new cabbage patch doll or learning to ride a two wheeler.

Then I was thirteen.  I was competing in a Social Science fair and had picked a topic way, way to big to be covered by a seventh grader.   In the course of my research I started learning about what happens to children and women during times of civil war.  One night I sat in the public library waiting to be picked up by my Dad.  I was reading a National Geographic that had been decaying in the periodical section for longer than I had been aware of where Africa was.   I read horrified but unable to put down an article about a girl, the same age that I was then who was pregnant, a product of rape by a militant out to destroy more than her village, out to destroy their pride.   Her child would be born, and then die because of lack of medical care, and because the mother did not have the support of her formothers, she had no idea how to nurse her child. I was a selfish teenager.  I went back to reading Sweet Valley High after I had placed highly in the State level of competition.

I was eighteen,  I was alone in my dorm room, my roommate was home for the weekend, I had not really made any friends yet, and I was kind of afraid because of this still.   An infomercial for Feed the Children was showing on repeat on a local station.  I watched it over and over, crying and feeling helpless for those children, for myself, for the entire world.  I took out my new Discover card, hot out of its envelope, and gave a one time gift of 200$.  I told myself that I would do that every few months with money earned from my part time job at Sears.   I never did it again.  I made friends.  I hung out and watched Monty Python, and went to get free makeovers at the mall.

I was nineteen, and then twenty.  I spent my spring break for two years building houses and doing basic medical care for the families that were subsisting and living on the town garbage dump in a Mexican border town.  I swore I would be back, that I would never forget them, that I would do everything I could.  I never went back.  Never did anything more than offer them up in the occasional prayer.  I went back to my studies, my new “important” job.

I was twenty-one.  I had a professor who had spent years in the peace corp.  He was passionate about educating American young people so that they in turn would pass on their wealth of money and knowledge to people in developing nations.  He told me once that he was teaching me to fish, and that I was meant to teach others.  I signed up for Graduate School that very day.  A major in political science, international relations emphasis, specializing in women and children in Africa.   I would graduate, go into the Peace corp, help people and live on nothing, give it all back to the people who had less then nothing.  I fell in love.  My sure fire ticket into the peace corp was not re-elected.  I decided that I could go be a missionary eventually, someday.  But for now I need a HOUSE!  A NEW CAR!  A BIG ENGAGEMENT RING!  I went to work to make money…not a difference.

I was twenty-six.  I cried whenever I saw my child drinking thirstily at my breast.  I read and researched all of the information I could get my hands on about donating healthy breast milk to AIDS orphans in Africa.  I pumped and pumped and pumped, the freezer FULL.  I could help and still  be a good mom!  I could save lives with what God had given me!  I…..had a drop in my milk supply.  I gave every ounce intended for AIDS orphans to my own child.

I am twenty-nine.  I stay home with my son and pretty much have zero money that has not been earned by my husband.  I spent my disposable income for the next long while on a fancy new camera.  I have not pumped in months, and doubt I would have enough milk to bank.  I have dropped out of my bible study, I go to Sunday School more to catch up with my friends than to quench my soul.  My thirsty heart has not been able to sit through a sermon in months because I need to parent this banshee that thinks church is the perfect time to run around.  I keep thinking.  I keep searching, I keep praying, I keep needing…something.  Something more.  I want to grow, I hate feeling stunted, hate feeling useless in the grand scheme of the world.  I know that The Son is worth putting my time and energy and resources into…but aren’t all children?  Why is he so blessed and others…is cursed the right word?

God, make me sated,  make me fulfilled, make me fruitful.  Use me, use me and yet let me take care of my family.  Is it possible?  Am I really supposed to only care about my child?  Do I just wait to care about anybody else?  Do I sell all my possessions and give them to the poor?  Do I take more Lexapro and not worry about anything?  Amen, I guess.

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