On Motherhood – Page 10

Some Days are Unforgettable

August 19, 2013 By: Angela Parlin

It was Tuesday morning, when we left the blissful beach and drove through stomach-sickening mountain roads toward Santiago. We were a mix of fear and excitement, and hoped our expectations for this day weren’t too high.

On the drive, I thought about the inspiring women at Proverbs 31 Ministries, who long ago inspired me to pick up a sponsorship packet for a little boy who needed some help and Jesus.

Years later, here was our whole family, at the end of an amazing week in the Dominican Republic. God worked it out that we could now meet some of our Compassion kids.

After hugs and gifts and tears, the boys ran off to play ball with their Dominican brothers in a dark, cement gym. Two little girls went from I don’t know what she’s saying, to playing dolls, tossing balls, and chasing each other.

Compassion staff showed us around and helped us understand their program. The center was both humble and terribly impressive. Among classrooms for tutoring, there was a computer lab, a barber shop, and a brand-new bakery where older students learn to support themselves. Outside, they work together to tend a large garden and grow food.

By our standards, much of the place was run-down. But they make it work in such an exceptional way.

Compassion’s tagline is “Releasing Children From Poverty In Jesus’ Name”. But it is not just a tagline. It’s the theme of all they do.

“If the children leave here without loving Jesus, I feel like I’ve failed them,” the center’s Director shared with us through a translator. This was the heartbeat shared by all the Compassion staff members we met.

After getting to know the operation, fifteen of us squished into their minivan and drove 30 minutes across claustrophobic town to a very American plaza for pizza and orange soda and an afternoon of play.

People told us we could not understand how much we meant to these kids. They were right. They depend on us. It was humbling, the way they hugged and loved and clung to us.

The day exceeded our expectations. It was an absolute thrill. By the end, we felt exhausted but completely satisfied.

Then our kids, in the cab ride home said things like, “I can’t believe we got to meet them,” and “This was one of the best days of my life.” These kids, who we have accidentally spoiled, who go to Disney World and Lego Fest and too many parties, and hold these things dear, they felt the weight of this visit.

We can’t shake our meeting with our Compassion kids. It was emotional—thrilling—humbling—unforgettable—and more of a blessing than we can put into words. But let me encourage you with these:

If you are able to sponsor a child who lives in poverty—anywhere—DO IT.

And if you ever get a chance to go and meet that child—GO!!!

To see how Compassion’s program makes a remarkable difference in childrens’ lives, follow this link. If you would like to sponsor a child now, click here.

Flight 549 to Santiago

August 11, 2013 By: Angela Parlin

A couple months ago, on Mother’s Day, I wrote this post about mothers on the other side of the world who confront global giants like poverty and hunger and disease, every day.

A few days later, my husband and I traveled to the Dominican Republic to visit friends, just us…and our four kids. We made our way through New York City on a 24-hour layover, to Santiago, and finally, Monte Llano.

We lived a week of days there, amazed at beautiful mountains and perfect seas, captivated by welcoming strangers all around.

I didn’t want it to end, most of the moments we lived there. Only the ones where I was dripping sweat and realized why every other girl had their hair pinned up.

Our friends took us along to visit families they’d been getting to know, whose children attend the school where they work. We were invited into homes with dirt floors, chickens running around, cats to control the rats. Roofs were made of scrap metal and ripped sheets served as walls.

Of course, we thought about the way we live like kings and queens, in our beautiful homes with so much food we beg to make it stop, and the ability to purchase all sorts of amusements.

But it wasn’t their material poverty that made the biggest impression. It was their genuine happiness, in the midst of few choices, little food, and without all our possibilities.

It was the way they welcomed us in, two families with a grand total of nine children.

It was the community we witnessed, the kind of I-need-you-and-you-need-me we don’t often see here.

It was the little things ~ the abundance of playmates, tales of adventure on the island, toys made from twigs and imagination.

Walking around, thoughts swirled over taking up my cross to follow Jesus. Is this what it looks like to lose life in order to find it?

The transformation in our friends was evident. They gave up their life to move there, in a lot of ways, and it hurt. But by the time we arrived, they had a whole new life–there, but not dependent on that place. And they don’t want to trade it, ever, because they have lived that beautiful life. They want more.

This doesn’t happen only by leaving all your stuff behind and living abroad or working in a mission. It just happened that way for them.

I continue to revisit this beautiful place in pictures and memories. I wish I had words for the meaning and significance of the experience. But I can barely find words to summarize the trip, let alone the abundance of thoughts it sprouted.

For now, there is no resolve. I am left with what is: a book of photos, an amazing memory, a conversation started, much to learn, people to care for, and God above it all. For today, this is enough.

What about you? When and where has your spirit been moved by some distant place?

God Writes the Gospel

August 5, 2013 By: Angela Parlin

From her bedroom window, the full moon glows. Rays bounce to the north, south, east, and west~painting a cross of light in a dark sky. Supermoon circles large in the center of a bright, shiny, old, rugged cross.

I sit on the corner of her bed, watch my sleeping beauty breathe, and stare at the moon.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther

Tonight God writes the gospel on the moon. And oh, I need this gospel

Most days, I gulp down living water and some, I savor. But then I run through days, where the gospel feels lost on me. Some days start on such a high note, but tangle up in chaos and disappointment. Others, I have to beg myself to get up on top of it all.

But instead, I often feel irritated. And when I finally sit down for a few minutes without little people asking for more pieces of me, I ask God really mature and selfless questions.

Why won’t they ever leave me alone?

And then I laugh, since this is the arrangement I put in place to begin with.

The night of the super-cross, it hit me. The way of the moon is to wax and wane, and the light can all but disappear sometimes.

My light can all but disappear, in the jumble of kids and school and however many things to do. In the way I react to their childishness and stubbornness and rips and smudges and everywhere-messes. I want to remain in Him, to be a light that shines His love day after day, even when it’s only for my little crew.

I also want to be left alone sometimes, and I want my house to look nice, mostly always, and I want to stay on schedule and my goodness, I want to COMPLETE things when I start them. And so, sometimes, my light goes out or at least, gets really dusty. How is it so hard to remain in Him, when I do take the time to begin in Him?

That night, I saw Him cross the moon, and my heart welled up with this visible shot of gospel. I pondered the weight of His cross and held tight to the depth of His love for me, right in the middle of my frustrations and failures. And it was bright, y’all.

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone. Are you looking for it? Where has He written the gospel for you to see?

Before I Became a Mom

May 12, 2013 By: Angela Parlin

Before I became a Mom, I didn’t look so closely.

There were kids on commercials wearing rags, emaciated. I looked away, hoped there were only a few.

But there are many I’ve learned, too many needy little ones—hungry and thirsty for food and love and belonging.

Little eyes that burn through me, these line the landscape of my dreams, and I question: What is this, God, which you are stirring? What can we do to help? How can we be the change the world needs?

Before I became a Mom, it was pretty easy to avoid poverty, this global giant. But once I gathered little ones in my arms who knew me from the inside out, I understood…many are in desperate need, and so we are all in need.

This world is broken down in ways which allow our smallest to suffer and die, parentless and hungry. This is my problem. And it is yours. We would never let it happen to a neighbor down the street, but what about across the world?

Before I became a Mom, I never considered what life might be like for Mamas on the other side.

And then I tracked wet diapers on hospital charts and fought giving up parts of me and packed up diapers and discovered I would be hereafter late to everything. And then I carried burdens I thought I could fix and calmed irrational fears and fed and trained and cheered and woke at 3 AM too many times for too many different reasons.

Now I know what it is, to be a Mom. To nurse a tiny bundle to life. To reassure and answer questions (hundreds and thousands of questions, oh my!). To celebrate successes and teach them their great worth.

Both here and there, the heart of motherhood is the same: simple, complicated love. Love that hurts like laying down a life. Love that braves the scars of sacrifice, that suffers long and dies to self repeatedly, for the sake of others.

But what if we poured out all the love we could, and the stronghold of poverty kept us from providing even basic needs for our children? What if this was all we could see—malnutrition and high rates of child mortality?

Will you join me? Because WE MUST FIGHT THIS. We must join hands and stand up (now) and use our Mommy brains. We must not get overwhelmed with all the horror in this world, but keep eyes fixed on Jesus, and carry these neighbors close to our hearts. Might we look for ways to live less extravagantly so that others can just live? Click here (http://www.compassion.com/babies.htm) to learn how each of us can help mothers and babies live and thrive this Mother’s Day. Join me!

He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; He gently leads those that have young. Isaiah 40:11, NIV

The Gift of Angelie

April 15, 2013 By: Angela Parlin

She entered this world like Skylar, two pretty little summer babies born the same day. She went home to a simple wooden house with a thatched roof, while Sky came home to her carpeted, pink bedroom, with 10 fancy wooden letters announcing “Skylar Kate” on the wall above her crib and monogrammed dresses in her closet. Worlds apart, these two, under the same blue sky.

These birthday buddies run around outside in dresses and love to play Mommy with their dolls, to play games and create crafty masterpieces. They help wash laundry, make their own beds, ask loads of questions, and they dream.

Angelie runs errands and keeps the house clean while her Mama works farmer’s fields for less money each month than we make in a day. And not only us, but most all of us over here.

It’s a hard life there, on the hillside, with just a Mama and baby sister, needing clean water, better nutrition, steady employment, and education. We have these in abundance, these life-changers that could turn their lives around.

In pictures, Angelie wears little pink flip-flops and a red plaid sundress, and a smile that turns my life around.

Poverty voids hope, yet Angelie has the sparkle of hope in her eyes, the twinkle of dreams.

Compassion International presents this little angel with the gift of hope. The center she attends each week feeds nutritious meals, and teaches her how to brush and care for teeth. There she plays soccer, memorizes Bible verses, and gets tutored in her schoolwork. She learns to write letters, and we get to be the lucky recipients of these, along with her drawings, little pieces of her world we treasure.

At this center run by Compassion, and the local church across the world, she is safe, she is loved, and she learns about God.

God, who wrote a plan for the whole world and chose her to be a part of it.

God, who knit her together inside her Mommy and hung the heavens and told the ocean how far it could go.

God, who created Angelie, created you and me, for such a time as this.

When I look at this little girl, the words of Isaiah 58 sound off inside me again,

If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…

It is this that brings me low, turns my thoughts away from the cruelty of poverty I’ve been staring at, brings me face down before God. I’ve been praying for this girl and her family and for the church there, these brothers and sisters of mine, to love our “little sister” well.

But some days it strikes me how much more WE, as in me, myself, and the great big church of Jesus, need the prayers~for we hold the Power and the resources to come together and loose the chains of injustice and set the oppressed free.

But we are just so darn busy, living lives we have been given. Yes, we love people around us and give money to the church and share the gospel when we think someone is interested~but how many of us would say we spend-ourselves-for-the-needy? How may of us could say it?

This is the call I wish to live up to. To live out the whole gospel, not only the part that is easy to accept and build a pretty life around.

There’s more for me to do, more for all of us to do, and I am praying we will come together and care and stick our necks out for the oppressed and prove Who we follow with our checkbooks and credit card statements or lack thereof, and with our calendars and our attention, and spend our lives on their behalf.

If you, too, wish to spend yourself on their behalf, this is one amazing and life-changing way you can do this: www.compassioninternational.com.

Sponsor a child today, and begin a relationship that will rock your happy little world. 🙂

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Flight 549 to Santiago

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God Writes the Gospel

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Before I Became a Mom

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