Door of Hope

God's perfect timing always amazes me....

I was beyond frustrated yesterday evening over this DSS/CSE stuff. As I was driving, on my way to church, I was kinda thinking/praying and talking to God. I do that a lot. I have one sided conversations with Him where I just basically lay it all out there. Believe it or not, He always listens and answers. May not be immediately. But He always does, I just forget to listen sometimes. Anyway. I was basically being very ungrateful for everything that I have. Forgetting that I am beyond blessed with a wonderful daughter, family, group of friends, home, car, job, etc. I was also wondering if there was anyone in my church that was somehow connected to DSS/CSE that had any pull in the system.

I get to church and realize that our mission team that just came back from South Africa will be speaking. I literally looked at my dad and said "if I had know this was going on tonight, I probably wouldn't have come at all." Are you sensing the mood? Well, while we are waiting for them to get started a friend of my mom's comes up and says out of nowhere - "You know ______ works for DSS, have you talked to her? She is pretty high up. She is never here on Wednesday nights but you can talk to her Sunday" I think my jaw almost hit the floor. This is a person that I talk to every Sunday. I had.no.idea. Go God! Then this person, who never comes on Wednesday nights, walked in the door. Go God!!

Then the ladies from the South African mission team started their talk. It was about a month spent in Johannesburg, South Africa with the Door of Hope. This is an organization that takes in abandoned babies. Each month in Johannesburg 50-60 babies are abandoned. Many of them left in boxes on street corners, in vacant apartment buildings, in trash cans, etc. Some of them are even abandoned at the hospital. The people are destitute and desperate. They typically don't have the means to feed themselves much less a baby but there is no b.c. available to prevent pregnancies. So this church literally created a hole in the wall where women can abandoned their baby, without any consequences, and know that the baby will be well cared for and eventually adopted out. As they are telling about the time they spent over there, they are showing a slide show and talking about each of these babies. I am bawling. It was like a floodgate opened within me and I couldn't stop. These babies have no real family. The people and volunteers at the church are amazing and wonderful to them but they will never know their mom or dad or grandparents.

How ungrateful am I?? I was just complaining about CS yet I have the means to care for my daughter and care for her well. My heart was so touched by the stories and the pictures. And I realized that God needed me to hear them. It was His gentle reminder that no matter how bad things seem, they can always be worse. I hope that one day I will be able to volunteer at the Door of Hope. In the meantime, it opened my own door of hope with a gentle reminder to be grateful.