It’s been three days since the hospital, three days for me to grieve, three days for me to think… God must have known we needed a break, because these three days have been fairly low-key, with ample free-time in between ministries, during which consequently, the internet has never worked for more than a few minutes at a time, leaving me nothing to do but read, think and journal.

I decided to write out a list of questions I needed God to answer. The way I see it, I can either be angry at God or angry with God. The nuance is a subtle one but I’ve come to learn it means the difference between bitterness and closure. Some questions came to nice conclusions, and others just led to more questions but they all led to this final question:

 Why am I involved in this? Where do I fit in? Why couldn’t she have died just before we got there of right after we left? Why did God time it so that we would be there to pray for her and then to see her die? I can only conclude that I was meant to be there, but this begs the question: why? I realized that first of all, I was there to be Jesus’ hands and feet in that moment. While I felt incredibly useless, just holding that child, patting the mother’s back and crying, I began to see that that is exactly what Jesus would have done had He been there physically. He showed me that I had loved that family the way He loved them, and in doing so, I had been a piece of Heaven on Earth in the midst of all that Hell.

But the second reason for me being there runs far deeper and has quite a few repercussions. This experience was a wake-up call for me to say the least. That girl died from something very treatable, very preventable: Anemia, a simple vitamin deficiency. Maybe I could have prevented it. There are all kinds of organizations working here to fight malnutrition (which happens to be the cause of 50% of children’s deaths here in Haiti. One in two children who die, die from malnutrition. Fun fact, huh?). Maybe if I had sent in a couple checks instead of buying a new pair of jeans, they would have been able to reach her. There are thousands of children just like her who die everyday from things that we could prevent. That I could prevent. God didn’t take her life. We did. This world produces enough food for every single human being to have 3000 calories to eat a day. Yet, a small percentage struggles with obesity and has so much surplus that much goes to waste while the rest of the world dies from things like Anemia. God was angry just like I was that day. He was angry that His little daughter died because His other creations hadn’t looked out for her.  Because we didn’t take care of her.

So then what if  the reason I had to be there was because God wants me to do something about it? Non-question. God wants me to do something about it. He wanted me to do something about it long before. Ever since Jesus came preaching heretical ideas such as “love your neighbor as yourself” and “take care of the needy and the afflicted”. I am beginning to see that He put me there because this is something He wants to commit to. This is a battle He wants me to fight, a journey He wants me to embark on.

And as this realization sunk in, the rest of the questions I had began to make sense. God is going to glorify Himself in this situation, and He wants to do it through me. God is going to redeem that girl’s death, and He wants to do it through me. Jesus said :  “unless a grain of wheat falls into the gorund and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24). If I go back home to suburbia and forget all about this, then that girl was just another child who died from malnutrition- just a number. But if I do something about it, if I let this story shake me and push me to make a change, then thousands of lives could be saved through her one death. That is redemption. That is bringing glory to God.

And so I find myself for the first time in my life with a purpose. This is why I am here. This is what I am supposed to do now. That girl’s story needs to be told. And when it is told, it will shock people the way it shocked me. Because she makes it personal.  She made this problem real for me and she will make it real for everyone who hears it. She made me want to do something and she will make others want to do something. So I will tell her story. I will start here, with this blog and I won’t stop until something changes. I will tell as many people as I can in hopes that together we can redeem her death and actually make a change.