Kwacha

I found myself especially overwhelmed with “feels” today. I tend to be one that doesn’t have mascara on by the end of the day with my sweaty eyeballs (that was how I explained it to toddler boys many years ago), but today it was gone well before lunch. Weirdly, it was over the concept of money and poverty. While preparing for this trip, I have found myself caught off guard by how I (we) see money and our abundance.

I sat around with sweet friends last night and we all shared stories of when we were “poor”. The truth is, that chapter of our young adult lives was marked by date nights funded by change found in the car floor and in seat cushions and in having to tell ourselves “no” from time to time. I ran around today collecting odds and ends for my trip. I stood in the Target aisle and debated how much to spend on an eyelash curler. That is a synopsis of my financial struggles then and now.

Then I sit at my desk. A small stack of Malawi currency in front of me. Each of them 50 kwacha in value which is about $0.07. The average yearly earnings in Malawi are about the amount I spent at Target and only 10% of their population will ever even hold money. It is an entirely different thing than I have ever had to grapple with. I have never held one of my children while their emaciated body struggled to find the next breath, knowing I had no food to feed them when they awoke. I have never started my day with problem solving that included obtaining water. The reality of a life of days that know only strife, struggle, disease, hunger,... I can not even imagine. It is so foreign. I feel broken and ashamed. And in literal seconds, I can have thoughts of what color I would like to repaint my cabinets and a Christmas present I should order. Oh, what an entitled American I am. My focus distracted even in sympathizing for another.

These bills, kwacha, are on my desk because I am handing them out to friends who are going to be my prayer partners on this journey. I thought it clever that they could be bookmarks in Bibles or placeholders in wallets that would cause people to be visually reminded of me. I am seeing that they may be much more than that. I am believing that they are a reminder of just how I need to be broken and refined so that I can truly love these people. To have a sincere relationship with someone you must be a able to truly understand them and who they are. That is going to take God to move in me to connect me to their experience and hearts. My honest prayer is for God to create such a sincere passion in my heart for the patients and families I will meet in the next weeks that the differences in our lives will fade away and our common need for grace and the wonder at the love of OUR God will bind us together in ways that the world cannot explain.

I would love you to join in praying for these precious people and for me! Send me a message and I will send you a kwacha as a reminder of how blessed we are, how we need to be ready and willing to be spent by our heavenly father, and how we as Christians hold the ultimate treasure that knows no end and only multiplies as it is shared!!!