Compassion for moms of the world

When I was pregnant I cried often. Ok, I cried all the time. I watched a dumb TV show where women gave birth and I cried. One birth, one big cup of tears. At church when baptisms were being celebrated, I bawled. It always had to do with babies. I thought it was the hormones. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. Nope. 6 months after delivery and here I am, still crying whenever I read/hear something joyous or tragic about babies.

It's normal. I am a mom. I can really empathize with other moms' joys and pains. Before I felt bad for them, but now I feel their pain in my heart. It's difficult because I want to hear about sad stories -so I cry a lot. I want my heart to be broken. I want my eyes to be open so that I do something to help others. Two examples of this have been particularly striking lately:
- Last week the USAID administrator, Dr Raj Shah, came to my place of work and told us of a woman he met at a feeding center in Somalia who had to choose which child she would carry to the center because she was too frail to carry both. Thought Sophie's Choice was literature? Think again. It happens every day. Can you imagine how tragic (for lack of a more powerful word) it must be to have to choose between your children and leave one behind?
- Today I watched a documentary called A Precious Life about an Israeli doctor who tries to save a Palestinian 4.5 month old baby. When the mom is told at first that no one matches her son for a bone marrow transplant, the look in her eyes and the way she looks at her baby's hands, like she's seeing them for the first and last time, is almost too painful to watch. That story is also so difficult because it takes place in a country that hasn't known peace in more than 50 years and where both parties have a legitimate right to exist -I am not going to get political here and will leave it at that. It was wonderful to see how two people who could hate each other ended up talking to each other, laughing together, hugging, and sharing a slice of life. At the same time, the documentary is a good reminder, if one needs such a thing, that life is fragile, that so many people live with little to no health care and that babies die every day for preventable reasons. It's also a good reminder that peace starts at the individual level.

I realize how fortunate I am to be born in France and for my son to be born in the US in an upper middle class environment. I realize how lucky I am that he's healthy and growing normally. As a matter of fact, he woke up and cried while I was writing this post. As I held him, rocked him, nursed him, kissed him, I thanked God for his good health. It's so easy to think about Somalia, the DRC, Afghanistan or Gaza as places so politically messed up that peace seems too far fetched to imagine. But when you get at individual level, when you think about the lives of mothers, fathers, brothers, children and what they go through day in and day out, then you have to want to do something, anything, to help. Personal plug in... If you want to do something about the famine in Africa, it's still time to give to the Ask 5 for 5 Campaign. Your funds will be matched once by a generous donor AND five times more by World Vision. That means that $5 is turned into $35 right there and then! Whatever the cause that makes your heart ache... do something!