A Spirit of Calm and Peace

Peter, Little A and I sat down after dinner tonight and turned on the Hope For Haiti Now broadcast. Little A was entranced by the music of Alicia Keys and sat motionless as she watched pictures flash across the screen. I was taken aback at her attentiveness. I limit what she is exposed to, but this was different somehow. I know she is far to young to comprehend any of what she sees, but I knew as I watched her look at the pictures and listen to the song, her little mind(conscience, spirit..?) could sense the sadness. I quietly explained to her in very simple terms what I could, and while I know at 19 months old, it likely meant very little to her, she seemed to grasp the sincerity of my words. My mother heart knew this is only the beginning of a lifetime of learning about the desperation in the world that surrounds us. Peter and I discussed the fact that we will have a great responsibility to help Little A and the rest of our children process the events of the world we live in.

As Little A and I sat down to go through the nightly bedtime routine, we opened the Book of Mormon to where we left off last night and as I started to read, I was touched at the timing of the verse that we were on. It was Mosiah 4:16:

"And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your
succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need;
and you will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain
and turn him out to perish."

I explained, as we often do, what that scripture meant in layman's terms. We then knealt down to say our nightly prayer. We have been helping her this week to say the words herself by whispering them to her and having her repeat them. Tonight I said most of it, but as I prayed for Haiti, I urged her to say the words "peace" and "succor", words she has never learned before. She repeated them, and I felt the Spirit strongly there with us.

We don't have much to give, and giving to Haiti has been in my thoughts constantly since the earthquake struck. The day it happened, Peter came home from work and we both had had the same thought during the day that we needed to give something. We decided to give what we could through the LDS Church's Humanitarian fund, but I still felt we needed to do more. As I thought about, I decided to clean out our closets and donate what clothing, shoes, and other items we had that we just didn't need. Little A had clothes that she outgrew before she ever wore that still had the tags on them. I had intended to send all of it to some charity that would distribute it, but quickly discovered that items (especially used) weren't wanted as much as money was. I finally decided that the best route was to give it to the Deseret Industries, where the money from the sales would filter back into the Humanitarian Fund, and to take the new clothing items to the Church's Humanitarian Center. It just feels like so little.

My heart aches for Haiti, for the children without parents, and for the parents who have lost children, and for those that are just hanging on to life. The First Presidency of the Church released a statement today, and I found it especially poignant.

What are you feelings on the tragedy in Haiti? How are you helping your children understand it? What are you doing to help?