I don't know what to do with it...

When someone brings me a problem, I usually know what to do with it.

“Dad, my shoe keeps coming untied…”

“Dave, the dishwasher isn’t cleaning the dishes…”

“Dave, I tried to jump my bike from the pier to the barge and ended up in the river, I need some dry clothes…”

“LT. Truman, my wife just had a miscarriage…”

“Sorry LT., there are no replacement parts for that anywhere in the western hemisphere…”

“Mr. Truman, the bearings in this motor keep erupting into giant fireballs…”

            I think it is something I learned from my Dad who, without exaggeration, could fix pretty much anything. For example, I watched him fix the exhaust system on my VW bug with a pair of green bean cans, it was amazing. It is also partly that I am a guy, and we are made to be fixers of problems. And it is partly that I am an INTJ personality, which means I am pretty much right all the time, just ask my wife and daughter (don’t ask my boys because they are also INTJs and think they are right all the time too).

            It wasn’t until the last 5 years or so that I ran into problems that really stumped, and stunned me.

“There are an estimated 147 million orphans in the world.”

“Every 18 seconds, a child becomes an orphan…”

“2 children are sold every minute…buyers can order off the ‘menu’…”

“Half of the children who graduate out of foster care will be back in the judicial system by their 25th birthday…”

 “They don’t think people will want to adopt children with medical problems, so they send them away to ‘special’ orphanages…”

“Memphis has the highest infant mortality rate in the country…a child dies very 43 hours…”

“1 out of 10 orphans will kill themselves within 6 months of leaving the orphanage…”

 “When she leaves the orphanage at 16, she will be met at the gate by men who will then sell her into prostitution…she will most likely be dead before her 18th birthday…”

           

            I don’t know what to do with it. These problems overwhelm me. Each time I have to face them, even in writing this blog, it is like being punched in the gut. The magnitude of the problems seems too big. The cost of failure is enormous. Literally, the lives of innocent children are at stake. How is it possible to solve problems this big? Where do I start?

            What I am finding is that generally, I don’t have to ‘start’ solving these problems. Organizations like Change30, Together for Adoption, Two Hearts for Hope, Bethany Christian Services, Lifesong for Orphans, Mission Link International, Love146, and Red Page Ministries are moving and shaking to find and implement solutions to these problems that haunt me. Amazingly, this simplifies the problem for me. Now I just need to figure out how I can help them help others and together, maybe we can know what to do with it.

(P.S. This post is a perfect target for some feedback on what you do when faced with these giant problems, so fire away.)