One of my best and oldest friends is due to have her first baby tomorrow! It is wonderful and happy news and obviously I'm thrilled for her but...I'm not there! I was hardly going to join her in the delivery room but I would love to be there now to share her excitement, giver her a hug and to be able to rush round once she's home and have a hold of the baby. I can't hug her, take photos or hold the baby. I rang her today and we had a lovely chat but it isn't the same and I hate that.
I had an email today to say an old family friend has died. He's been ill for a while now so I am not hugely shocked but it's still a nasty surprise and sad news. Once again I feel helpless and distant. I can't sign our family condolence card, see the family or go to the funeral.
I am stuck here. What do I do?
Each week on Tuesdays I'm part of a prayer group who pray for our womens' work. Each week I hear more and more life stories that would make you weep. Cancer but too poor to afford drugs. Daughters who've been taken away to be prostitutes. Women who've had children murdered. Pregnant women beaten to kill their unwanted and unborn baby. The list goes on. Each woman is uneducated, poverty stricken, has many children which she cannot provide for and has been abused/has a violent or unfaithful husband. These poor women are trapped in their miserable lives with no way to help themselves or their children. They are too sick or uneducated to gain proper work. They have to take on "boyfriends" or stick with abusive husbands in order to feed their children.
We frequently talk about a hopeless situation but until now I don't think I truly saw people without hope. These women are trapped in an endless cycle which carries on with the children. Our foundation gives money, starts up classes for children and support groups for the women but the sickness, abuse and pain continues. I pray for the same women every week and my partner Jill has been praying for years and...the shanty town is flourishing, the children are now teenage girls with children of their own and the women are still being beaten.
These women are so lost, they are without options and have no future. Am beginning to realise the pain and inertia that comes from being truly without hope.
I am stuck here. What do I do?
I pray. I work in the school and support group. I visit the women and try to help them. Itry to show those women and children that they are precious and that God loves them.
To be honest that feels like I'm doing doing nothing. I just hope and pray that sometime, somehow we get some hope.
Hey, you are definitely NOT doing nothing. I heard a sermon once which said that the one and only thing Job's 3 friends did right was to sit with him and be silent at the beginning "Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was." Job 2:13 Just being with someone, acknowledging and listening to what they are going through is a great gift even if you can't do anything more. I know first hand how difficult and frustrating it is to watch someone unable to leave an abusive relationship, but you can be there and you can pray and I expect both of those actions are worth more than you'll ever really know.
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