A hard day.

I feel like I need to write. Another compulsive need to do something.

Maybe that will help my blood to come down to a simmer, instead of the rapid boil it's been at for the past few hours.

When I get stressed or anxious I move. I do. I busy myself. I clean or cook or organize. I do something. So as to not sit idle. Moving like this leads me to pray. It gives me a release for what is building and has no other outlet. I am a mover by nature, anyway. So typically it's hard to tell when something is wrong or I am working through something internal...because I act out in the same way that I always do. Moving. Doing. Listening to loud music. Quiet and reflective. It's how God wired me.

I already passed some of the evening baking so now I will sit and type.

But I don't really know what to say, or how to articulate the struggle and jumbled up mess of emotions and thoughts.

I need to try.....

since moving to Burkina I have been in a constant state of learning. Recognizing that life is drastically different here, I have proceeded with the grace of God to have a teachable heart. To hold off judgment. To see. Observe. Learn. Understand. I have not perfected this pursuit by any means, but with the Lord's encouragement I have made it my personal goal while living here to let grace, humility and understanding go before me, that I may come to a deeper love and understanding of God's people and culture here.

When faced with extreme pain and injustice I have been able to step back and hold off judgement. The people here are up against insurmountable odds, and who am I to cast judgment on their decisions made out of desperation and suffering? A desperation and suffering unlike I have ever known. Who am I...to throw a stone?

When mothers dump their newborn babies down pit latrines.
When families refuse the acceptance of a child born out of wedlock and the mother is forced to give up her child.
When a mother abandons her babies after birth and leaves them to die on a cement slab in an abandoned shack.

The details may be different....but every story is the same of the children who end up in orphanages here....

abandonment.

Regardless of the reasons for their abandonment....they've been abandoned. And I've heard just about every horrible and sad story of how different children have ended up in orphanages here...and each time my heart breaks a little bit more. It breaks from the Father's love. And up until today, I have been able to approach the harsh realities surrounding child abandonment with an understanding, a deep grief, and an acceptance that life is more complicated here and there are no easy answers. There is nothing easy about Burkina. If these past 11 months have taught me anything it is that there are no easy answers. Nothing is cut and dry. Human suffering is more immense and happening on a greater scale than I ever realized.

This past year has required more prayer, surrendering, and willingness to change than I knew possible...and in the face of it all I have allowed my Savior to strip me bare and teach me what it means to enter into a brokenness I have never experienced until now. To teach me to feel and hurt and cry over humanities pain..but yet withhold judgemnt and comdennation in the face of what is different and hard and painful, and offer grace and mercy in return.

Until today.

Today, grace and mercy seem impossible.
Today, I have picked up my stone and toed the line.
Today, I do not want to understand the motives or reasons behind the actions.
Today, I found that forgiveness is easy when you are detached from the ones who need it.
Today, a righteous anger burned up in me. Or, at the moment it is righteous in my own reasoning.
Today, it got personal.

Today, I want to throw my rock. 

I have known all along his history. I have been made aware of most of the factors surrounding his arrival at the orphanage. I accepted it. It's sadly no different than all the other kids I know who live there. It is never easy and always filled with grief, but I accepted the hard and painful surrounding his circumstances. I accepted what is.

Until today, when I read his official home study...and the reality of his young life hit me like a ton of bricks. And I went from empathetic and sensitive to outraged. In a blink. And the notion of accepting this and allowing myself to understand the "why's" is not such an appealing thought right now. Today, I would rather be angry.

The saying I have kept at the forefront of my brain since moving here..."it's not wrong, it's just different"....has no impact on me tonight. Tonight, I can not accept that it is merely different. Tonight....I can only see what is wrong. And tonight, I would rather throw my rock against the injustices because it holds the deluded prospect of righting what is wrong in my eyes.

Today, the realities of life here have brought me to my knees once again. My oh my this is getting to be a mighty familiar place....