It’s 6:30am on my side of the street, with a mind up and rolling from the wrong side of the bed. Same scenario took my yesterday morning. And the day before, actually, which is starting to weigh on me. 

My neighbor Fred, across the street, is standing on his forty-degree porch, waiting for the newspaper to tell him today’s news. I wonder what it is about these contents that makes him so eager—or why their aroma alongside a cup of coffee can make one’s world seem right? Enough eavesdropping though. I’ll journey back to my porch and wonder what is going on in me and why such inner angst? 

I have a hunch, but am far, yet, from a solution. The day before yesterday, and yesterday’s yesterday, woke to what seemed a heavenly bliss. Not in the celestial sense, or sense of earthly perfection, but in a deeper, more spanning sense.

The world seemed to stand still for a moment 6 months ago when a powerful earthquake rumbled its way through the tiny country of Haiti and destroying everything in its path. My friend Stuart was there. You can read and see more of Stuart in Haiti during that time here. Newspapers wrote about it and Stuart witnessed that God is very active in Haiti among the Haitian survivors. Below is a recent article Stuart wrote for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, student magazine Contact. (Stuart and I became friends while students at the seminary). How cool it would be if the country known for so long now as the poorest in the western hemisphere, will now and forever be known as God's country!

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I think it’s fair to say that many of us who write our own blogs also read a lot of blogs. We might also spend a fair amount of time on twitter. We might also waste a bit of time on facebook. And before we know it, we might find ourselves wondering how it got to be 1am and we still haven’t put the dinner dishes away.

And by we, I mean me.

I spend entirely too much time online. It's what a call a neutral addiction. It's not hurting anyone - I'm not flying into a drunk rage or throwing my life away or getting arrested. I'm just quietly wasting lots and lots of time.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. It has certainly expanded my worldview and made me feel a part of a broader community of moms. I have never had that sense of isolation as a mom that I heard my mother’s generation talk about. Despite the fact that some days I don’t ever make it out of my pj’s, I still feel like I get to do a little socializing every night on facebook. When my kids go down for a nap, I can catch up on my reader to see what my friends are doing, or relate to an anecdote from someone else in a similar lifestage. I can blog about my struggles with choosing a minivan, or dealing with the school bully, or my inability to remember my assigned snack day in the classroom, and the comments often feel like my very own community of women, propping me up and guiding me along the journey.  It's also provided me with an amazing community of adoptive moms, with families that look like mine.  I may not see them every day, but I know they are out there, and I get to keep up with them on facebook and twitter.

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I am a little uncomfortable with calling myself an "earthquake survivor". When I got back from Haiti, I had my little 15 minutes of fame as all the local news channels tried to get an interview with the "local Orange County woman who survived the earthquake". It all seemed very overdramatic to me - but I realize (sadly) that people tend to be more interested in a story about someone they identify with. I did the interviews, most of them on my first full day home, because I wanted to use the attention to talk about humanitarian parole. As I saw the stories later, I chuckled at the little liberties they took to make it sound more dramatic, and I rolled my eyes at the descriptor of "earthquake survivor". It doesn't seem a fitting title for someone who doesn't even live in Haiti, for someone who came out unscathed, from someone who took a plane home to a normal life and an intact home.

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More than a dozen award-winning artists are combining their musical talents to help make sure desperately needed relief supplies continue flowing into Haiti, where the struggle for survival continues for hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims.    

Healing 4 Haiti is a collection of 15 songs from Christian music’s leading artists and worship leaders and includes the anthem “Come Together Now (Music City Unites For Haiti),” penned by Michael W. Smith, Cindy Morgan and David Mullen. The song list also includes tracks from Israel Houghton, DecembeRadio, Kari Jobe, The Afters, Hawk Nelson and many more plus an exclusive version of Jared Anderson’s new song, “Carry Me.”

Healing 4 Haiti will be released by Integrity Music at iTunes on Tuesday, March 2 with a retail release slated for March 16. A minimum of $5.00 per copy of the album sold will be donated to Haiti earthquake relief. The donations will be used to provide clean water, shelter, medical care and other critical aid from Samaritan's Purse. It will also support the work of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's Rapid Response Team, which had chaplains on the ground within 24 hours of the earthquake providing emotional and spiritual comfort to survivors. Additionally, proceeds from “Come Together Now (Music City Unites for Haiti)” will go to the Haiti relief efforts of Samaritan’s Purse and the American Red Cross.

“Every artist and every individual who can use their talent and ability to shed light on those in need, when it’s all added together, it makes a huge difference,” says Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association/Samaritan’s Purse. “My prayer is that God will use Healing 4 Haiti to touch the hearts of this nation to give generously to the suffering people of Haiti.”

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So this is my first blog ever...

A couple of definitions --  Humanitarian: A person devoted to promoting the welfare of humanity.

Jesus: The human-divine Son of God; the great High Priest who intercedes for His people at the right hand of God; the central figure of human history; the one who conquered sin and death; and the way, truth and life through whom alone can we be reconciled with God.

Are you a humanitarian?  It is a big word and an even bigger idea.  With Haiti on our collective hearts and minds it would be hard to understate the need to ask ourselves if we really do exist for others.  Sure, we do sometimes, maybe even much of the time, but as for me, not all the time.  We live in a broken world, groaning under the weight of its decay, haunted by the knowledge that it could have been different.  We see shadows and remnants of the perfection that was and is to be, but live in, with, and through the vestiges of brokenness.  

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It’s easy to lose sight of an Infinite God. When God is everywhere, how can you find Him? If He already knows where you have been, what is there to tell Him?

In the midst of great tragedy, like the Haiti earthquake, it is easy to feel like God has abandoned us. It is easy to say, “Any prayer to God would be a waste of time.”

Our conversations with God can get lame— fast. “That thing you already know about, but have chosen not to fix, can you please fix it?” Lame, boring—I am not interested in that dialogue.

But what if our dialogue with God could be more? What if it meant more?

In the Psalms there is record after record of people screaming at God. That’s right, I said screaming. It’s in the Bible. And here’s the kicker, it’s not called “wrong.” Instead, it’s embraced and enforced—yelling at God was part of being an ancient Israelite.

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My heart is heavy tonight for the adoptive parents who are still waiting to get their children home from Haiti, and for the children who wait in the balance. Since we got our son out of Haiti last week, things have changed dramatically. On January 18th, the US government announced it was granting humanitarian parole for orphans already in the process of adoption. This made perfect sense: these children were shown to be eligible for adoption prior to the earthquake. The Haitian and US government go through extensive searches when a child enters the system to show this to be true, including the procurement of death certificates, DNA testing, and birthparent interviews. I was so proud that our country saw the value of evacuating these children into the care of waiting families in the US, not only to remove them from a precarious situation, but also to free up room in orphanages to take care of children who are orphaned or displaced as a result of the earthquake.

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I saw an angel this morning.

Maybe it was our conversation last night at dinner. My daughter Alex was convinced that as she watched the trees swaying in the wind, she also saw an angel, waving at her, bringing her peace.

There has been a lot of un-rest and non-peace in the world lately. I’m like many, I’m sure…watching the news from Haiti, emotionally wrapped up in it. My brother’s family is adopting from Haiti, and his wife Kristen was over there visiting with her eight month-old baby, Karis, when the quake struck. She was evacuated safely with Karis, but the little boy they’re trying to adopt remains there…and it’s breaking my heart.

It’s more than just hearing of the numbering of the dead. It’s the story of a mom, lifting a blanket and discovering that the still form is indeed her son.