I have been re-reading the blogs I’ve written that YOU have been visiting recently…. the older blogs. I must say it’s nice to see my thoughts in a daily way about my life as it unfolds.

I will confess  I get a report of every sight that is visited on my blog every day. I do not know who visits me but I know what interests “them”. I can also track how many visits a day I receive. In the past four months since I began blogging I will tell you, first I am doubling my visits each month and , second,  I don’t sit to write for a bottom line number. I am driven to tell one story in my head that wins over the ten others that get put at the back of the line each day— DRIVEN. I have so much to share. I am not sure why God made me this way but I know for sure I need to share it. Blogging is ideal for my condition because you come to me! I’m not selling you anything. I just want to be real and explore the very dangerous layers of my mind and soul. Craig is my greatest fan. I get an email from him every morning if I’m late to post.  I just know I am a writer,  and I am an artist …and I want to give it away. To think I would get rich writing a book or photographing for money doesn’t excite me one little bit. Craig has a good job. God provides. I am writing and sharing my photographs EVERY DAY because I love YOU, and because I hope to share what God has placed on my heart. Craig chuckles at one point each day because there’s like a swarm of bees hovering around my head and the honey they make is the ideas that flow from my mind. I just don’t know how it happens, but I’m never finished. I am never on empty. I am always blooming with pretty or meaningful ideas. I don’t mind exploring the depths of my emotion or pressing my mind into difficult calisthenics. For me that’s great entertainment. I just want to thank you for joining me on this journey as I share.  Without you I’d still write and I’d still begin my words with a meaningful photograph I’ve captured, but it wouldn’t be as much fun. So I give you a deep knee abiding bow of thanks for coming with me on this ride. I’m not sure where it’s going… but I know it is not  likely to slow down.

(I am always very happy when I am working with my camera.)

Now I ask your forgiveness as I share the topics of my Ugandan adventure that were either impossible for me to photograph or upsetting at a molecular level.

Every time we took a ride through the city to go anywhere it happened. A small child in the line of many approached the window and held out their hand for money. They had a smile that was not energetic or happy but desperately hopeful. We didn’t exchanged american money for Ugandan shillings until the last day when we went souvenir shopping. We didn’t have anything to give them. The locals don’t give them money, to discourage begging from cars, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t crush our spirits. I photographed everything I saw in Uganda– EVERYTHING, except the children begging from our cars. I couldn’t do it. It would be like throwing rotten eggs at them, a humiliation. In the city we saw children alone, seated on the side walk as people breezed by, they held their little hand out and they kept their head held low. Nothing like that feels more like a direct stab in my heart. For some reason Icouldn’t cry but I felt sick. I couldn’t eat for hours, I developed tension in my neck and my mood sunk into a melancholy. As I laid in bed at the end of a long day, hoping for sleep to envelop me, only the visions of their little sorry souls with their hands held out kept my mind captive to the wakefulness I wished to shed. These little ones are the photographs stuck in my mind and not in my camera.

There is nothing that makes it easy to see a child in desperate conditions. It initiates the warrior within that wants to leap up onto a table wielding a sword and proclaim with a megaphone: “It’s not right! Children need protection, provision, guidance and great love, not the last resort of begging to fill their bellies.  “FIX IT, NOW!’ That’s what I want. And, thus, the resulting sickness overcomes me because I  know  I can’t fix all of the problems for all of them, now.

 But I want to.

 Some how I have to believe God will make this right. He has a plan and a purpose for every circumstance each one of us encounters. He grows us from our sufferings. It is not for me to know his reasons for allowing some to suffer more than others. It is for me to answer obediently to do what I am burdened to do.

Craig and I are going to adopt a child from Uganda. That’s a start.