Jesus loves me

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Im sick a lot….

In the past year that ben and I have been married I have been on seven rounds of antibiotics, had at least one doctors appointment a week, and cost our insurance over 20,000$ in medical bills. Like I said i’m sick a lot. I don’t know if its the humid air in Houston or that homesickness has a component I wasn’t aware of but in the last year my health seems to be declining. This week I am sick again, most likely with strep but yet another visit to the doctor tomorrow will be able to give me some answers. So i’m lying in bed, letting my wonderful husband do the dishes and thinking about little orphaned Hannah that I met in Uganda.

On my second day at the bulrushes orphanage we had changed diapers, played with kids, taken babies on a walk, and fed lots of hungry mouths. It was almost time for us to leave when I sat down with a little girl to give her a afternoon snack. As soon as i slipped the smelly cereal into her mouth she screamed in pain and tears starting running down her cheeks. I looked at the local nannies confused, they just kept encouraging me to feed her but the more food I put into her mouth the more she screamed. I finally gave up and told one of them she looked like she was in physical pain. Thats when they informed me that she had ulcers in the back of her throat and had been struggling with a fever. I cradled her till she stopped crying and realized she was burning up. I took her temperature and realized it was 102, being from America and not raised in an orphanage I panicked but then I remembered these kids are living in close quarters with a ton of other children and illness is apart of everyday life. Tears began to fill my own eyes and I looked down at the almost naked baby in my arms. She had no mother to come and feed her soup when she got sick, or rent her movies when she was too sick to go to school, she would have no one to love her except her adopted nannies.

Then God reminded me he would always be a father and mother to this little girl. She had been taken out of poverty to be given a life of hope and a future and he wasn’t going to let his little girl be sick without receiving some much needed love. Thats why I was there, just to love her. So for the next hour I was there I rubbed her back with cold washcloths and got the nurses to give her Tylenol. I rocked her back and forth singing Jesus loves me because its what my mom would have done for me and once she feel asleep in my arms I put her in her bed and knew that while I wouldn’t be there tomorrow to love on her God was never going to abandon her.

Today I am 800 miles away from my mom with a sore throat and wishing she was here to feed me soup and comb my hair but she isn’t. However my husband is, the man God sent me to love on me when i’m too sick to wash the dishes or make dinner. Just a reminder that we are never abandoned.