Broken heart

heal my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like You have loved me
break my heart for what breaks Yours
everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause
as I walk from earth to eternity


such simple words with such depth of meaning

I have always loved this song and thought that I had figured out exactly what it meant.

I was wrong.

Yesterday I spent a few hours discovering what a broken heart really feels like.  It came in the form of a 3 day old baby boy named Daniel.

Our team spent the afternoon in a place called Fundacion Nuevo Nacimiento.  We have trouble spitting that out, so to us it is now called the "baby place".  It is a ministry that has been started in the inner city of Bogota by a beautiful soul named Isabel.  She had a passion in her heart for the thousands of underage pregnant girls from the ghettos.  She has opened up a home and it is packed to capacity with girls that have been abused, sold, used and damaged - finding themselves pregnant and no longer valuable to their abusers.

Some are as young as 11 years old when they come to Isabel.  Some are there for a second time.  The looks on their faces clearly show the pain of betrayal.  As we toured through the facility Isabel told us stories of the different girls, where they had come from, their complete mistrust of men.  The guys in our group were clearly seen as a threat to them.

At the end of the tour all of the girls were invited to participate in making a craft with the girls from our team.  It was a time that they could be the little children that they really are.  They tentatively left their beautiful little babies in the care of me, Floyd and the guys.  I wonder what was running through their minds as they left the room full of gringos and their babies.

Now, I love these guys, but none of them have very much experience handling babies - especially when they are all under a year old.  We had 13 babies in cribs surrounding us.  Suddenly one started to cry, then another and another.  I picked up the first little one - only 3 days old.  A beautiful baby boy.  Those instincts of long ago motherhood quickly kicked in and he settled down.  One by one the guys were convinced that they could actually do it too.  What an amazing afternoon.  The smiles on the faces of those rough, tough, and hard to bluff guys - was priceless.

I was in heaven.  A warm, sweet smelling newborn in my arms, sleeping peacefully without a care in the world.

And then reality hit.

I was suddenly reminded of just who this little boy was.
His mother is barely 16 years old.
She has lived on the streets all of her life.
Her life has been full of drugs, prostitution, stealing and murder.
This is her normal.

Realizing what this sweet baby's life was broke my heart.

I had an ache that reached to the bottom of my soul as I stared at his face.  I walked over to a corner and began to plead with God to spare his life.  To keep him from the darkness that he was born into.  To give him a hope and a future.   The tears splashed down on his tiny hands folded together and I kissed them away.

It was difficult to lay him down in his crib and walk out the door at the end of our time there.

I have cried many tears for him since.  I know that his Father has also shed more than tears for him.  I have to hang onto that promise to be able to keep going this week.  I have to KNOW that there is a plan for his life.


show me how to love like You have loved me
break my heart for what breaks Yours
everything I am for Your Kingdom's cause
as I walk from earth to eternity....