From the moment Lynda was born, she experienced extreme complications from having the umbilical cord wrapped around her throat. She was flown immediately by helicopter from the hospital in Brewton, Alabama to Sacred Heart's hospital She began having seizures at just a few days old and had a heart cauterization done when she was just a couple of days old. She began taking medications for seizures when she was just a few weeks old.
As I have said in earlier posts, I was only twenty-two years old when I became Lynda's foster mother and I had no idea what Lynda's medical condition really involved. In only a matter of weeks, I had settled into a routine of seizures, trips to the emergency room, hospital visits and many other issues that I had no prior experience with. It wasn't until years later that it hit me full force just how precarious her life was and how much she depended on the daily anti-convulsant medications she received. I sat beside her bed one night and thought how different her life would be in a country where medications were not readily available. It sent shivers down my spine to realize that her life (and that of many others) is dependent on a handful of pills.
Throughout the years, I've often watched on the news as parents of children in other countries helplessly sit by their children's cots as the children slipped away due to the lack of water or food or medical help and I've wondered, why is America so blessed and why are we not more aware of our blessings? Even within our own country, there are huge discrepancies in how our nation's children are cared for. We seem to turn a blind eye to the fact that children are starving right here in "the land of opportunity". We as a nation have bought into the notion of the haves and the have nots as being something that is okay. A child goes to bed hungry at night in America and our consciences are barely pricked. We watch it happen to children of different colors and nationalities to the point that children are orphaned and literally living on their own and we cannot even fathom how this is possible. We are told about human trafficking of children across the world and because it hasn't happened in our neighborhood or our town, we somehow compartmentalize it away.
We live in comfort and relative safety and I wonder how many times a day we even stop to say thank you to our heavenly Father who has blessed us beyond measure?
You may not believe this but you are richer than you think. In fact, the poorest Americans are richer than 80% of the worlds population. Stop and think about that for a second. The pictures of people living in poverty in AMERICA have more wealth than almost everyone else on earth.
What this graph shows is that
the poorest of Americans (with average annual income of $6,800) are
richer than 68% of the world (many of which live off less than $1 a
day). The flatter the line the less inequality there is in that
country. Brazil has the biggest discrepancy between their ultra poor
and wealth citizens. One surprising result from this is that America’s
poorest poor are richer than India’s richest rich (as a group). Within
India’s richest there as a vast difference between the super rich and
the relatively rich for that country).
It is worth repeating---the poorest of Americans (with average annual income of $6,800) are richer than 68% of the world! Can you wrap your mind around that? Many live off less than $1 a day!
If you live in a country that you are in the 32% of people in the world who live above 68% of the world's population...I hope you like I feel extremely blessed. I know that I am undeserving and I have done nothing to place me in this group rather than the group who survives on $1 or less a day. I also realize that those who ARE surviving on a $1 or less a day have done nothing to deserve to be in that category either.
Lynda's life wasn't always easy but she was blessed to have fuzzy blankets, her favorite foods and people who loved her. She had access to medications to keep her comfortable and pain free even when she was transitioning from this world to the next. How blessed our lives are even when the world tells us otherwise. How blessed my life was when I realized that all I needed I already had when Jesus saved me by his grace.
When I count my blessings...Lynda is right up there at the top of the blessings God has given me. Undeserving merit. I am just humbled beyond words at his love for me.
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