Despair Beyond Belief

It started out like a typical morning. A check of the weather showed the morning temp at 16...brr! Too cold to run so that meant a bike ride on the trainer. I climbed onto the bike and began cruising. Before long I was out of the safety of my house and pedaling along streets of devastation and despair. Buildings were piles of rubble, people in the streets, lost faces looking for salvation. The piercing screams of a young boy, probably 8 or 9 years old. His mother frantically trying to relieve his pain with her arms wrapped in loving embrace. But it wasn't enough to numb the feeling of a needle piercing his skin, sewing a gaping wound without the benefit of anesthesia.

I pedaled faster wanting to leave the scene of devastation, but my eyes wandered to the young American woman; wanting to make life better in another country she now found herself in a hospital bed with one leg partially gone.

Then there was the priest who left the bedside of his dying mother in the US, as she told him he was needed by others. He did what he could administering last rites to a hurting people who had nothing to begin with and now had less than nothing.

This bike ride was painful and haunting. I flicked off the TV, but the visions still roam in my head. They won't leave. How can a people, who were in poverty before this earthquake, build new lives? How can they face life when they are starving and have lost loved ones? How can they be helped? Mom

PS You can also click on the "Craft Hope for Haiti" button on our sidebar and purchase or donate handmade items with the proceeds of the sale going to helping Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.