do I have to get up?

Since Haiti, I can't explain it, God is opening my eyes wider and wider. Right now, I feel like I am just waking up from a deep sleep. Things are blurry and I am really disoriented, but there is no mistaking---I am totally awake.

I am awake to the fact that there is a much, much larger world out there and God has totally and completely got a bigger picture in store for me than I can even imagine. I feel like I am experiencing the lyrics of the song that is playing in the background of this blog...there is much greater purpose that I can be experiencing and have been missing out on for so long. It makes me so ashamed that I have been too self absorbed and too busy to step outside my own little world to see it.

In the past 24 hours, I have been completely reminded of my own shallowness and my complete lack of faith in my God. Oh sure, I say all the time that I believe and trust God--and in those moments, I honestly think I think I do--, but a phone call yesterday morning exposed that gaping wound in my oh so calloused heart. Two little boys that Sean and I left our hearts with in Haiti, Moses & Wannson, both contacted cholera at the orphanage and were not expected to live. I cannot describe the range of emotions I went through over the next couple of hours. Frustration-anger-sadness--extreme sadness--guilt--and doubt....lots and lots of doubt. Doubt that God could really handle this by himself with me being so many miles away (doesn't that just sound so shallow?!?) By the end of the day, though, God did miraculously intervene and literally moved mountains and got a medical team to the orphanage and as of this afternoon, both boys are still with us here on earth. However, I cannot escape the nagging feeling in my soul and those glaring questions that come with it.....It is as God is literally asking "why did you doubt Me?"/ "Am I not real enough to you for you to know I am always in control?" / "Do you not trust Me and believe that whatever answer I choose--regardless of the outcome--it is the right one?"

Then there my mind screaming the other questions at me "why are you waiting to adopt?"/ "did you know that Moses & Wannson are just 2 of millions of children that are sick today?" "Do you understand the global need that is screaming for a solution while you sit in your house worried about what color to paint your bathroom?" "When did you become so shallow?"

These and about 50 other questions have been permeating my mind for the past 24 hours, and the only thing I know is that I am coming face to face with a person that I do not like--and that is me.....or at least, should I say, the person that I am. I know that God loves me, and that will never change. However, to get me outside my own little world....which is ultimately where I know He wants me to live....He has to make me know intimately the very person who lives in her own little world. It's funny--I think that I didn't realize that this was going to be a stop on the journey! I really thought God was going to break my heart for the people and situations around me, use me to be part of the solution, and somehow I was going to be gaining treasures in heaven---doesn't that just sound so sweet---....again, dummy me...what I am finding is that He isn't using Haiti to break my heart for the people....He is using the people of Haiti to break me and my calloused heart....and expose all of the many pieces that He does not own...and there are so, so many...

If it is taking all of this for me to see just one more person outside my own little world, what is it going to take for my eyes to finally open to the billions of people that I still haven't seen....