Tunnel Vision

 My kids and I have been going to the summer movies at Harkins this summer and it concerns me, each week, how a our foster babies will handle sitting through it. One fell asleep on me while the other enjoyed a snack in the stroller, then when the sleeper woke up we did a quick switcheroo and the other one fell asleep on me while the previous sleeper enjoyed a bottle. With one foot rocking the stroller, one foot rocking the sleeper, one arm holding  a baby and the other arm being hugged by my sweet boy (3 yrs). I was in full mommy mode. I loved the movie playing this week, "Charlotte's Web" is a classic! Well, movie ended and we all headed back out to our vehicle. It's Arizona and it's July! Its that time of year where we are enduring the triple digits, the humidity while awaiting a good monsoon, the sweat beads that begin to form and roll down your face... just buckling kids into the car (or more like bus, for me). I had 4 of my 6 in and had 2 more in the stroller to go. I was getting hot and impatient, just as the woman walking up to the vehicle next to me hit the remote on her key chain and her van doors slid open. "Seriously!?" I heard myself saying out loud. Now I was stuck, couldn't move my door without hitting hers, and still had 2 infants sitting, in the stroller, in the heat, on the other side of my door. Man did she inconvenience me. Didn't she know I was sweating and trying to load up 6 kids?!

 {insert heart check}

Driving home I passed by a man with a long white beard, scraggly white hair, and filthy from head to toe, carrying a duffle bag. As I passed by, with my air conditioning blowing on me, my water bottle at my side, my iPhone gently rested in the cup holder beside it, along with a console crevice filled with spare change and  my well dressed and freshly bathed children in their car seats, all with full bellies and the security of a mommy and a daddy's love... I began to pray, "Lord, please be  with that man! Send some one to.....   I stopped. I began again, "Lord, please be with that man! Send some one to.....      I was that "someone"! And that someone was taking all her blessings for granted as she drove by the very person that she had been sent to bless. I drove up the road a little ways to a park where my kids play, knowing there is a vending machine there. I grabbed up $2 in quarters and got 2 cold gatorades. I turned around and headed back down the road but I was not seeing this man so I drove up the next road, then back down again. I decided to head back towards home and ... there he was, red faced, sweating and still walking down the road. I did a u-turn and pulled over. As I put my window down he seemed very hesitant to approach. I held up the gatorades and asked him to please take them, its hot out! He smiled a toothless grin and thanked me. As I drove away my 6 year old commented, "wow mommy, that was really sweet of you... he's already drinking the blue one!"
I began to sob. All I could say was,"but now what?! now where does he sleep?! We all go to our nice big home, we eat our filling lunch, and he is still out here, alone and homeless." I cried the rest of the way home, and even now as I type. I am the one that was sent to help this man and all I could do was buy him gatorade!?!? How can we as "christians" (striving to be like Christ) miss the very calling that accompanies that title!?!? We have tunnel vision. We walk through life striving to build our only little worlds into picture perfect perfection, that we cant see the world around us. We are so accustomed to living a blessed life that its what we have come to expect.
"I doesn't fit into my schedule"
"My home isn't big enough"
"That wouldn't work for my family"
"We just don't have the means to do that"
"They got themselves there"
Wow. We are good at justifying why we cant carry out the very message we claim to believe in. I am guilty of it. But the more I pray to be used by God, the more he makes me uncomfortable in the THINGS that we all take for granted and make priority over serving and the more He breaks my heart for what breaks his! I pray that I continue to see the world around me, that my priorities are HIS priorities, and that I do NOT live life with tunnel vision (only  focused on what I chose to see)... because even though the homeless, hungry, orphaned and hurting are not sitting on our comfy, suburban doorstep... we are still called to step out of our comfort zones and DO!