kimberly*klein

I’m sitting in the dark, typing with a candle next to me because otherwise the light from my screen really bothers my eyes. There was a storm tonight, and as happens rather commonly here in Kenya when it storms, there is a power blackout. It’s a really odd combination of something so old, light from a candle, and something as new as the technology of laptop computers and wireless internet.

Today the staff wanted to me to rest after my long trip this weekend, so I’ve spent the day resting and trying especially to catch up on the emails to which I am long overdue in responding. As I’m writing, the hardest thing has been trying to describe how I am doing, emotionally, after all that has happened over the past week.

Wednesday I heard the news that my friend Coletta, an HIV-positive widow with four children, had committed suicide. While I didn’t know Coletta very well, I have had more consistent interaction with her in Kenya than probably any of the other LCW guardians to date. I had only met one of her children, her youngest girl, Laura (a four-year-old who is also HIV-positve), until the second boy, Dennis (15) came to the office to tell the staff the news about his mother. I haven’t even met Nick (16 or 17) or Joshua (11). So it’s hard to explain why I was so emotionally broken by this circumstance, why I am so completely burdened for these children.

To make it all the more emotionally confusing, I left Thursday for an extended weekend with the Juras in Nairobi for the wedding of Nancy’s sister Lucy. So as the staff was working this weekend, with the police investigating, and preparing for and assisting with the burial, I was participating in a weekend of festivities and celebration. My heart was so torn between one of the most depressing circumstances I can imagine and one of the happiest days in someone’s life. I spent a lot of time praying. I simply didn’t know how else to handle it.

It has taken almost the whole day for me to start to figure out what is going on in my heart. In one of the last emails I was writing, I think I started figuring out some of what I’m feeling.

The things I’ve been learning about in Kenya suddenly became tragically and starkly real.

It’s one thing to understand statistics about orphans.
It’s one thing to meet all these orphans currently supported by LCW.
But it’s another thing entirely to watch four kids become complete orphans right in front of you.
It’s another thing to watch a 15-year-old boy as he struggles to understand and deal with the grief of losing his mother to suicide, to see the way he tries to be strong, this half-boy, half-man, to see the tears he can’t stop from rolling down his cheeks.

It’s one thing to see the far-reaching impacts that HIV/AIDS is having on an entire continent.
It’s one thing to meet kids orphaned by this disease or meet people living with this disease.
But it’s another thing to meet an HIV-positive four-year-old girl whose father infected her mother with this disease before she was even born; whose father died of it and whose mother committed suicide, perhaps at least partially because of the exhaustion of how this disease was slowly killing her.
It’s another thing to wonder how much longer this little girl will live herself without the care of her mother and to wonder how she will get the medicine she needs to survive.

It’s one thing to question within my own heart, even before I came to Africa, how there is hope here, to wonder how hope is found in a place of such overwhelming need.
It’s one thing to believe that Jesus is hope, to be believe that He is here and that because of Him, there is hope in Africa.
But it’s another thing to believe this when I hear a friend has committed suicide because she has lost hope, despite the fact that she knew Jesus (or at least had exposure to Jesus).
It’s another thing to believe this when I see four children now in what looks like a hopeless situation for them, to believe that even for them, there is hope.

It’s one thing to pray that God would break your heart for the things that break His.
It’s one thing to experience this brokenness from halfway across the world.
But it’s another thing to actually witness first-hand the vast, overarching effects of the brokenness sin has brought to our world: death, disease, poverty, injustice, inequality, oppression, selfishness, apathy.
It’s another thing to sit next to someone who is lost in a grief greater than I can even imagine, to feel their brokenness and to know I am completely helpless to do anything about it.

It’s one thing to read that God is the father to the fatherless, the defender of widows.
It’s one thing to read that He is the great healer.
But it’s another thing to try to explain that to a child who has lost both his parents that a God he can’t touch or see will be his father.
It’s another thing to try to find the words to tell someone dying of AIDS that God is their healer.

It’s one thing to feel the way my heart breaks for the world, for people.
It’s one thing to be overwhelmed with reality.
But it’s another thing to wonder how much more the knowledge of pain, suffering and mistreatment affects the heart of God.
It’s another thing to imagine how much more His heart breaks for the world, how much the brokenness of this world grieves Him.

Welcome to Coletta’s legacy in my life.