What can we do?

A little over a week ago, Haiti's capitol was reduced to ashes. Now, its people fight disease and hunger even harder than they fought before. I spent a mere eight days on the island that Haiti is half of. Sure, my immediate thoughts zoomed to the little girl who gave me viral conjunctivitis in an orphanage on the other side of the island. Then, my heart tugged in the direction of the sugar cane village where the 15-year-old boy asked me in careful English if I would take him with me so he could learn more English and then clung to our bus until the rock laden road shook him and his friends off. These people fight hunger and disease every day. I wondered if they were okay. My hair has grown and been cut since the orphan girl braided it after walking me around her dirt yard by the hand. Now, I have a little girl to walk around by the hand. I will braid her hair one day. She sleeps under blankets in her bedroom in a house far from this disaster while Haitians sleep - some forever - under rubble and Dominicans sleep under garbage that lines their streets.

It, life, is hard. It just keeps catching up with this little family of mine. I lose my job. I get a crappy job. I get a better job - a break in the horrible pattern. Luke loses his job. Here we are. I wonder why this chain of bad events has to come down on us. I feel so selfish for complaining about BOTH of us not having good and stable, well-paying jobs. I will be able to feed, shelter, and insure my daughter. I might not be as comfortable as I'd like to be while doing it. I might be in debt for a lot longer than I'd anticipated when I learned I got a new job. I don't have to steal and run from guns and police and other hungry people to do these things though.

God has a way of humbling us. This disaster happened over a week ago, but I am just now getting down to thinking about it and applying lessons to my own life. I prefer to drift through days getting to the next exciting thing. I don't often consider people who are not close to me. I sometimes donate to the March of Dimes and St. Jude's, but that is the extent of my involvement. I don't know if I just don't do well with emotional situations because I'm a Vulcan-like Aspergian, or if I know that as soon as I look into the pained eyes in those photos on Google Images, I'm going to regret not pursuing that tug toward the sugar cane village, the orphanage, those schools, that kid I would have adopted after becoming a Dominican citizen, the people I would have fed to the best of my ability.

What can we do? We can donate. All of the money in the world will somehow find a way to get used incorrectly. Do our prayers do any good? Does it do anything for THEM if we keep praying or just appease our guilty hearts while we chow down on Chinese buffet? What can we do?