Right here

Watching the news of people in Haiti and listening to many people talk about how they have it on their hearts to go down and help has gotten me thinking a lot. I, too, just want to scoop some of those orphan children up in my arms and take them home with me- give them love and care and a sense of security robbed from them so early.

There is something so attractive about doing really tangible things to help people. We're attracted to service that helps us feel needed- clothes to the naked, food to the hungry. These are relatively easy places to feel like we are serving God directly.

This last week at work, a student had a medical emergency. He came home last night but was possibly going to need some extra care- I wanted to offer to take him in. How I longed to have that extra guest room I had always planned on just for a situation like this.

But we don't.

I find myself telling God I want to serve, but being very specific about who I want to serve and how I want to serve. I want to serve by taking in a scared, vulnerable, beautiful child, but not by picking up after my nephew (who is the most disobedient, difficult child I have ever met) when he comes to visit every week.

I want to serve by bringing food to people living in Tent City, but not by making food for my own family sometimes.

I want to give an occassional ride to school to a visiting professor, but not frequent rides to the grocery store to my mother- in - law.

And I ask myself: why? Why is it so easy to serve when there is no obligation, no expectation, and the people on the other end are so grateful and so much harder to serve when people don't notice, when it's expected of you anyway, when only God sees you....

Here I am. With no guest room because someone is living in it, with no baby room to prepare and get ready because it too is occupied. Our three bedroom home is full- nowhere for unanticipated visitors- sisters, friends, or exchange students... and I'm frustrated that my carpet is stained with dirt from work boots, that the TV is constantly on, that when I come home after a long day, my husband is in conversation with our house guests and isn't able to acknowledge me or talk, that the guest bathroom's toilet seat is always up and it's never as clean as I want... and then I remember...

I remember that I promised God if we were blessed with a home that I would share it. I promised God that if He blessed us- our blessings would become blessings for others. I remember that it's not really my carpet, my TV, or even my husband. They all belong to God- just as I do.

I remember that the stains represent hours of hard work, that the rooms are occupied by people that need them - that need somewhere to stay and that in ways, need us- my husband and I- too.

As Mother Teresa said, "it is easy to love those far away. It is not easy to love those close enough. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where love for each other must start."

And so as much as the need and the images and the thoughts of people in Haiti pull at me, as much as I wish sometimes to escape the complexities of relationships and work and life and live a life of service and simplicity, I realize that right now, I'm called to be right here. I'm called to appreciate and share my many blessings- to be patient with my nephew, with the people living with us- our family.

Lord, give me your grace. Give me the patience I need to choose love, even when it's easier to be upset or frustrated. Stretch me, mold me into the person you want me to be. May we never grow tired of helping others, may we find compassionate ways to ask for what we need from each other and from others in our lives and may we see you always, in the people we've never met, the people at work and the people in our own families. This we pray...