i love so weakly

I know...these post titles been so optimistic. But I need to finish recounting yesterday. So, it is my privilege to tell you how we ended our first full day at Huruma: by changing diapers.

At the orphanage, there aren't enough hands to give each baby, child, or woman the individual attention they need. So the mamas and sisters run on a mass feeding, dressing, showering, etc. etc. schedule. It can seem machine-like and assembly-line-esque, but that's just the system at Huruma. The sisters and mamas are doing the best they can with what they have. Changing diapers happens in such fashion: babies brought in one by one, remove old diaper, wipe them clean, lotion them up, put on a fresh diaper, and then onto the next baby.

Now, I've never changed a baby's diaper before. I like to avoid certain germs. As I started going through the motions of changing each baby's diapers, I went about it all very gingerly. I didn't want to touch soiled diapers or poopy butts. Heck. No.

But--lucky me--I was handed a baby and when I peeled back his dirty diaper, what should come overflowing out of it but massive amounts of poop. Onto my hands. I tried to be nonchalant as I commented to the mama next to me, "This one poops a lot!" She took one glance over and responded, "He's sick. That's diarrhea."

Um. Thanks, God.

As I thought about it later that night, though--really--Thank You, God. Because Jesus didn't fear our shit (I'm not trying to be foul-mouthed, I really don't think there is any other way to talk about our sin). I wrote this in my journal that night: "Jesus cleans up all of our shit. We're like that diarrheaing baby--he just can't help himself. He's a baby and he has diarrhea. And we can't help ourselves either, in a way--we're human; thus we are broken, sinful things. How do You stand to touch us, when sin reviles You so much, Lord?" The answer is that that is the power of love, to conquer sin.

So I got my hands dirty cleaning a sick baby. The same mama, watching me wipe poop off the baby's butt and then my own hands asked, curiously, "You're not scared of poop?" "Nope!" I lied cheerily. But, Lord help me, I don't want to be scared of my own and other people's crap--literal and spiritual. I don't want to be scared of getting my hands dirty, because I think that if we are ever in a prolonged state when we aren't confronting the shit of this world or of our own souls, then we are going against nature, for the truest Nature is God's, and He is the holy of holies.

Something else I wrote in my journal about a month before Kenya: "If You are willing, make me clean."

I shall never cease to be amazed--He is willing. So, so willing.