When the Need is Overwhelming

This chapter of Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption, entitled “Just one More, evoked a sense of quiet and reflection, deep thought, and several large intakes of breath.

You help one child, and a dozen more need your help even more.

You care for a child, and then have to send him back into the bad home environment he came from.

You change a baby’s diaper, and find worms, and you know hundreds more have the same problem.

You come face-to-face with your own limitations. You cannot meet the need that exists. If you try with too many, you will fail with all. You know intellectually that God could provide if He so chose.

But He doesn’t. Or the help doesn’t materialize.

And the little boy goes back to the home where he’s unloved.

The baby’s health is restored, and you keep her.

In Uganda, Katie Davis is living in the extremes. She experiences extreme joy when a child is helped. And extreme desolation and anguish when all the other children aren’t.

She does two things. She prays. And she clings to God even more.

If her faith was shallow, if the seed fell among the rocky wayside, she would burn out and leave. But that’s not what happens. The seed has fallen on good soil.

It’s the eternal question – why does God allow such suffering? And why does God allow such suffering to fall so hard on children, always so hard on children?

Katie keeps the little baby, whom she names Patricia, and then proceeds to describe her personalities and unique attributes, which Katie does with every child she adopts into her family.

As a single woman, she can only adopt girls under Ugandan law, and little Michael, who weighs less at six years old than my grandson weighs at two, must return to the family where he was so terribly neglected. But a prayer is answered for Michael.

Katie realizes that God is no stranger to this awfulness that happens to children.

The suffering, and the awfulness, fell hardest on His own child.

We’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie, led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.