No words

I don't have any words for the suffering Japan is enduring right now. I don't understand why these things have to happen. It seems so unfair, so ugly, watching what's happening to those people. There's no answers. This year, it seems like it's been one thing after the other. I'm in a unique place where someone, at least one family in our small community, has been directly affected by these disasters. Two of our students haven't heard from their family in Japan at all. Last month, the Martin family moved back to New Zealand, after being in Rwanda for 3 years and heading up the Salvation Army here. They moved back in time to watch houses of their loved ones crumble, and a relative die in the earthquake rubble. But they also were there to see friends who were rescued after three days. Kang Hee is my "special" little fellow in my class. He prays for Korea everyday now. At the beginning of the year, he didn't like his home country of Korea, because of the "bad dictator", and he refused to pray. Now, Kang-Hee understands that his country needs his prayers. He used to live directly on the border between the North and the South, and saw soldiers and shooting daily. His parents said he never could understand why he wasn't allowed to cross over the border. This explains the war games and "border crossing" games he plays at recess. (He has Asperger's too.) It's what he knows. It's what colors his world. Last fall, when there was a short, selective reunion between the two countries, the family met some of their relatives they hadn't seen in 60 years. How can you put something like that into words? I can't imagine. He prays for his uncles everyday now. He prays that he may see them again in heaven. Marijike lived in the Philippines before coming to Rwanda. Houses in her village were decimated in the typhoon in October. Families were broken, a neighbor lost her child. Every disaster, my children know someone by name who is suffering. Indonesia, fighting in Bahrain, they know someone. Eyoviel has relatives being evacuated in Libya right now who we are praying for. And my kids PRAY. They cry and cling, and pray. Sweet prayers.

It's different than being in the States where everything seems so far away from us...and while we grieve and pray and try to help, being so far away, we can rest easier. We are usually removed. Suffering is hard. Times like this where you see people waiting for answers, hoping for the best, trying to just breathe, and clinging to what they know and love. It's very different being in this international community where someone you know is hurting directly. My kids are angels. Only 9 years old and so sweet and precious. But they have already lived more than most of us will ever live in 5 times as many years. They have traveled, they know this vast world, they speak its many languages, and their worlds are being shaped by the things they are seeing and experiencing, and sometimes suffering too. I think about my friends who are genocide survivors, and try to understand what has colored their world, and why they are who they are today. Suffering is something I can't really explain; a mystery, so hard to watch others that you love go through. We all have suffered in our own ways, in our own families and communities. What we suffer through, someone else may see as miniscule. But nothing is trivial to God. Sometimes I think, it's when we are broken vessels that God is working and changing us, and others can see His glory shining brighter in our lives. Paul knew this. His suffering became his pulpit. His fiery trials became his reason for rejoicing. I don't get it though. It's hard to understand suffering like that. None of us have ever experienced what our brothers and sisters in Japan are suffering through. Let's remember them and intercede for them now.