Being in America is weird...

I've been back from Nicaragua for just over a week now. It was a phenomenal trip. But coming back this year has been harder to process than last year.

Honestly, being in the states brings a steady stream of frustrations for me.

For example...I wait tables on the weekends. I make more in tips in one day than it costs to send a kid to school for an entire year at one of the schools we worked at. Why is that a reality?!? Why are there kids who can't go to school when people can hand me outlandish amounts of money just for bringing them cashew chicken? I literally do not understand this.

Why do I get to sit here on my big comfortable bed, in my nice comfortable apartment while there's a family in Tipitapa huddled together in one bed tonight because they only have one mosquito net in their home that's just one room? 

Why do I complain about my homework when most of the world will never even get the chance to go to school?

Why am I stashing money away in a savings account when there are children starving all over the world and even right in my own city?

What did I ever do to deserve the blessing that is simply being born in the richest country in the world?

Nothing. I don't deserve this. None of us do.

But that's how it is.

 

So do we just go on living it up as rich Americans and occasionally saying thanks to God for having so richly blessed us?

I REALLY don't think so. And I really think we've gotten it largely wrong so far.

I know that we've been so blessed because we have a mission in this world. Those are our brothers and sisters out there in the world and they need our love. Sometimes showing love means sharing our the abundant resources that God has placed in our care.  

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, human trafficking, and every other ill in this world are not nameless faceless issues. They are full of faces of people who need our love. People who have stories just like you and I do. My hearts aches for them. My soul yearns to be sitting side by side with them, living this life, fighting its battles, and praising God together.

But right now I'm here. Right now I'm trying not to get frustrated with the world around me as it spins on, largely unaware of what I've seen and the people I've met and grown to love. Right now I'm in America, and it's weird.