Fruits and Nuts

Rrrrrrrrr. I hate it that my blog has taken a back burner, but alas, it has. I am so busy that I have to schedule trips to pee. I'm learning time management...the problem is that no matter how well you manage it, there's never any more of it than when you started...it's just crammed more full of stuff, which makes it seem like you actually have less of it. See, people who are organized enough to actually manage their time are the same type that can't stand to not be busy, so all the time they're freeing up with their wonderful time management skills is filled up with amazing efficiency. Oh, the vicious circle of workaholism.

I can say this about my experiences this past week:

I will never, ever, ever, no matter how wrapped up I get in my life, how overwhelming my problems seem or how pathetic or dire my situation seems at the time, ever complain again. If I do slip up, which I will, it will never be without thinking of what I experienced this last Sunday. I spent the entire day (4am to 7pm) treating everyone, or what seemed like everyone, within a 50 mile radius of a tiny village school in rural Iraq. I witnessed more grief, suffering, sadness, hopelessness, poverty, filth, desperation, and pain than I have ever seen in my nearly 30 years. It made South Africa and Mozambique seem like merely a hazy, muddled dream of such things. Sunday hit me like a ton of wet bricks from a three story building: fast and hard. I can imagine that a person who was hit by a ton of wet bricks from three stories would likely never forget such an experience...as I will never forget those 10 hours in the midst of dusty, sweaty burqas and crying children, bare feet, flies, and sheep. What plan God has for these people and this land are beyond me...how he could allow such suffering and not just swoop down and stop it is beyond my simple mortal reasoning. I can only trust that there is something in store for them or some plan for them. No child should be robbed of the chance to run, play, laugh, and grow by an angry, misdirected bullet that found it's way through her tiny shoulderblade and shattered her fragile spine. No babe should learn so early the pain of hunger and the ravages of malnutrition. No mother should have to hold in her arms her blind child who's sight could have been saved by just a few simple vitamins during the first months of pregnancy...the same vitamins that collect dust on supermarket shelves all across America. Yes, this is the only life they know. Fear, hunger, anger, despair, hate. And the children...that is the hardest thing to see is the children. They suffer so for the greed of men! Poor babies. Robbed of their innocence, their childhood, the joy of a life free of cares. It's very hard to see good here, in the midst of all the grief, but there must be some somewhere, but the war hides it so well. I hope I find at least a bit of it before I leave this place, or it may haunt me forever.