Pressure

My friend Dominic was in the hospital yesterday; he had thrown up 20 times the previous night and so yesterday they had to pump his stomach. They couldn't find out what caused him to be sick. When I spoke to him yesterday evening he told me that it was the pressure. He was not actually sick; it was just the fear of not being able to help all the boys at Cantonments. His worry that 90% of them were already lost.

I know that feeling.

There is a pressure that comes with this responsibility that not many people speak about. This feeling that we need to take care of everyone in our path. It can break a person down, eat away at us little by little, and if we are not careful-it can take us completely.

It does not attack every person that comes here- some are able to get away. But once it has you, it won't let you go.

It is a weight that we carry around with us everywhere we go-not just when in Ghana but when we are home too. It even follows me into my dreams and there are times
when I still wake up sweating or crying with the anxiety and fear of failure. We feel helpless.

There are so many children, how can we help them all? Our hearts take in more
than we can handle but we let them get bashed up at the expense of giving love
and hope to those who need it. It is weighing the cost against the benefit and
hoping that we are right when we say the benefit outweighs the cost.

So how do we stop it, how can we prioritize and channel it? That is what we
struggle to do. We support each other and pick one another up when we think we
have given up.

But we know it will continue. This continent is a part of us now...it has
coursed through us and taken over and we will never be the same. So while we are
thankful for the truth that has been shown to us; we will forever carry around
with us the pain of those we love and those we cannot help.

We pray for the healing of laughter and love but for those times when that isn't enough I will continue to remember that "Everlasting, his light will shine when all else fades"