all of us

I'm getting ready to go to Africa in a few weeks.

We've been preparing physically with shots, spiritually with prayer, emotionally and mentally with stories and visuals of the lives we will face over there... lives that are very different from ours here in America. In reviewing some of the very sad stories, it became easy for me to separate myself from the people we were going to meet in Africa... I saw myself going over as the helper, and them being the ones in need. Seeing yourself this way makes it easy to see yourself as better... the role of the provider is more important, right?

Wrong.

While, yes, I know there is a need in the villages we will be going to, and I am more than willing to take part in helping, it does not define me as superior. Just because our physical needs may be different does not mean that our emotional needs are not exactly the same. I think at the center of every human heart... EVERY... not just the American human heart, EVERY human heart, is the desire to be loved.

Yes... they need water, and food, and medicine, and clothes, and you name it, they need it... but one thing that, regardless of what we give them physically, they cannot live without is love.

I hope to not just meet the needs of people physically, but emotionally. I hope to love on some child who has never been held. I hope to hug a sick woman who hasn't been touched in years. I hope to talk with the girls about the boys they like and relate to them as if they were my friends here and not just some villagers in a third world country.

I hope to never again think that my need for love is greater simply because all of my physical needs are met.

This short clip is just for laughs, but yet so very powerful... at least for me. When I watched these girls I saw my group of friends just sitting around talking about boys and laughing. I saw the human heart. I saw a girl with a crush (even if it is on Michael Jackson). I saw us. All of us. You, me, him, her, they, them, us, and we... I saw all of us.