Compassion

My youngest child is in his last year of preschool. I know this, intellectually, but Tuesday evening he started belting out one of the graduation songs that they're already practicing. It's a random little song that each of the girls had sung at their graduations, and I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach. My baby is growing up.

On Monday, baby Melissa Hope Chapman succumbed to a congenital heart defect. We knew it was there, knew it was inoperable, but we thought we would have her with us for nine, ten, maybe twelve years. It was not meant to be.

As I thought on Wednesday about my plans to return to Haiti this fall, I thought about how hard it will be to go back without Melissa there. How strangely quiet the bunk room will be without her baby coos -and Jenny's coos back to her! And I thought about my little fellow graduating from preschool and how Jenny will not see Melissa through that, or any other, milestone. My heart broke a little bit more.

But here's the thing... as I put all the thoughts together into a big picture, I realized - and was humbled by the knowledge - that my compassion is strongly related to, if not limited to, my own experiences. I can only understand Jenny's experience to the extent that I can compare it to my own. And, having never been on that dark path, I can only imagine what she must be feeling.

A week ago, if you had asked me, I would have told you not to go on a mission trip to Haiti. I would have suggested you buy jewelry through me from the Apparent Project. I would have told you to do your research and send the money you would've spent on the plane ticket to a project you believed in. I would've pointed out that Haiti doesn't need you to build anything, she needs you to pay her native workers to build things so they can feed their families. And if you had insisted on going, I would've suggested that you go on vacation to a Haitian resort and pour your money into their struggling tourist economy.

But today I feel differently. Today I say "go." I watched Jenny go and fall in love with a baby, and a people. And the only way to truly sympathize with the situation in Haiti, or any number of other people and places, is to make their experience your own. See for yourself, feel for yourself, and open yourself in a way that changes you. Rid yourself of the need to imagine the hunger, or the hope. Go. Fall in love. Let it break your heart.