Lives better off alive...

Today I was entering who visited which child into their medical files and I realized something that just blew me away… not in a surprised sort of way, but appreciative sort of way.

You see, the most common “name” who came to visit the different children was the grandmother. But when I started to think about it, it WAS always a grandmother who came with unmatched joy and love for her baby grandchild. Her face would come alive at the first site of that baby coming around the corner and she’d reach out with overly eager arms to hold them. Grandmothers would often come the most loyally out of all the family members. Their uncompromised love and devotion to the tiny reflection of their lives always reminded of the purity of a grandmother’s love. I can say the same about my grandmothers…. They host a special love that only they can bestow on their grandkids. It is something about the twinkle in a grandma’s eyes when she proudly looks upon her legacy that strikes me so strongly. I have always been aware of the treasure of a grandmother, but in the recent years I have truly found the extreme value of them. Time with grandmas is different than anyone else, and the way they love their families no matter where they end up never ceases to amaze me.

Speaking of AMAZING…. Today I had the absolute honor of meeting twin babies that have defied all odds! I met a set of premature twins who were born in their very humble home who weighed probably around 4 lbs at birth. Because their birth was in their home, that means that there was no fancy equipment, no “sterile” environment, no team of medical professionals… they were just born the God-given way and in a God-given simple structure with one tiny room for a whole host of people. When I met them today, they were just almost a month old. I had no idea what we were going to walk into when we left to visit them because we heard they were tiny, tiny babies. Odds were, being so premature, they probably didn’t have a strong enough suck to get milk from their mama so we thought they might be extremely malnourished and dehydrated.

But God’s grace on their lives is incredible… we walked in to see two of the most precious bundles laying in a corner………..

The truth was that they were as healthy as can be! They had a strong suck and a strong fight for life! They both were likely gaining weight because they weighed just over 4 lbs and filled out nicely for their premature status. It amuses me sometimes to think of how much God protects His children—in the US, these babies would have been born in a sterile environment with a whole host of doctors and nurses, probably with the NICU on hold! But here I was, walking into a “Haitian hut” where premature babies took their first breath, and they were thriving and healthy! They hardly had a clean environment to manage those first few days, but their tiny immune systems were JUST strong enough to fight for life! This is the girl, Julia-

And this is the boy (Julio) who is with my dear friend Nikky—

No joke, those babies stole our hearts! How often do you get to hold 4 lbs boy-girl twins in a third world country who were happy and healthy!? They had no heart murmur, no diarrhea, no complaints! We will check them again on Monday to make sure they are gaining weight and still healthy, but something tells me these babies have a miraculous life ahead of them after that miraculous birth!

I saw a different Haiti today when we went to see those babies. I saw sustainability despite odds, new homes being built, and people hard at work. It is interesting to live in country so diverse. They have a different set of problems than America or Canada, but I’d have to also say that they have a different set of joys. Families are everything to Haitians- they all live, eat, and experience life today for all their days. They may be hungry, but I don’t see a starvation of spirit and loneliness like I see in America sometimes. They may be “dirty” and poor, but they have a different set of pure moral codes for how to life out their life. They may not all have educations, but I see parents working extremely hard to offer a better life for their children. You can look at Haiti in many ways—but it is a place filled with people who can feel every extreme of joy and the deepest level of pain just like everyone else. Living here just makes me aware the profound need to treat all people with respect. It makes me feel the pain of not having a best friend to always turn to or family to find familiar faces in. I’ve realized in myself and by watching others that everyone has an innate desire to feel important, needed, cherished, and accepted. To not feel those things brings a cover over your spirit in the sense of emptiness. Babies need to feel those things; toddlers, teenagers, working adults, and elderly all need to feel those essential things.

If you take nothing else from this blog, just remember to make the people surrounding your life feel like they are priceless gifts from God… because, truth be told, God gave you them as just exactly that.