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You've turned my heart of stone
into a heart of flesh
that it might love gain
that it might dare to believe it does exist
beyond the brokenness

Beyond the darkness
is the day,
beyond the rain, thunder and lightning
is a promise in the sky
arched and brightly arrayed

my heart receives it
and responds with hope

Heartbreak in Haiti!

Tears flood my eyes as I consider the sight
One child naked clings to her leg with not as much as a diaper or shoes
the other she cradles - a little girl, no more 6 months old
wearing only a onesie.
The little girls legs covered with the scars from old burns,
the result of living in a tent.

Now they have no tent.
Shoeless, homeless, hungry and naked
they sleep in the streets of Port Au Prince.
And their mother - is 19 years old.

My heart breaks as I hear her story.
How she covers her children and self with
a plastic bag as torrential rains pour down.
How she hopes to find food from a kind neighbor
(who also lives in the streets under a tarp or tent)
to feed her son and maybe if there is enough herself.
How at times she has no milk in her breasts to nurse her newborn daughter.

And all at once I feel helpless and ashamed.
I want to changed her situation and give her all I own, but I cannot.
I'm ashamed because I too have been 19 with two small children
and have never known the desperation in her eyes.
I have never slept in a street or begged for food.

I have only two things which separate me from this woman.
The fact that I, myself am no longer 19 and my children no longer small.
And the fact that I was born in America.