I'm telling you....it's EVERYWHERE

If you haven't read my post from Thursday, today's post will make more sense if you take a minute (or ten....sorry, it's a bit long) to go back and read it.

So, I wrote that post on Thursday.

Friday night, Hubby just happened to be out of town and I had planned to have dinner with a friend. My friend just happened to call around 5:30 saying she wasn't feeling well and thought she should stay home. I had already made plans to take Kloe and Jacob to my cousin's house - who they LOVE - for the evening, and I knew they would be hugely disappointed if I cancelled, so I just happened to decide that I'd go ahead and take them and spend an evening by myself (ahhhh....bliss!).

I dropped the kids off and, not knowing what else to do, headed for home. My route home just happened to pass right by Lifeway Christian Store, and I remembered there were some things in their sale flier that I had wanted to look at, so I just happened to stop in.

[Let me interrupt this post to say I spent an hour and a half at Lifeway, BY MYSELF, with no one hanging on me, no one fighting, no one pulling $5,000 (ok, maybe that's a minor exaggeration) breakable glass things off the shelf, no one saying, "Mom, can I have this? Mom, I want this! Mom, why can't I have this? Mom, can we go now? Mom, I'm tired. Mom, when can we leave? Mo-o-o-o-m!" Did I mention it was bliss?]

I was browsing aimlessly through the books, taking my sweet time, only looking at the ones with really cheap sale tags, and I just happened to notice this book called, She Did What She Could by Elisa Morgan. I had never heard of the book or the author before. Did you catch that? Never heard of 'em. I have no idea why I just happened to pick up that book in particular. The cover wasn't particularly intriguing. I wasn't being drawn by a familiar name like Beth Moore or Lysa TerKeurst. No idea. Totally random (yeah...).

I picked up the book and turned it over to read the back.

"Most of us care. We really do. We care about poverty and injustice, about orphans and the sick."

Now I was intrigued.

"And yet, weighed down by the everyday tasks of bringing home a paycheck, putting food on the table, and shuttling kids around, we question our ability to make a difference."

I started to feel....you know....that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach.

"Bombarded by one celebrity help-the-world-athon after another, we shrug our shoulders in futility and do absolutely nothing."

The feeling....the stomach feeling....was getting stronger.

I opened the book and started skimming through the introduction.

The author talked about how she had been watching a story on NBC Nightly News one night. A story about the abuse of mentally challenged adults in Serbia.

"I found myself standing in the middle of my family room, hands raised in the air, howling. Then a sob erupted, and tears started down my face."

She goes on to say that she is no stranger to tragedy, having witnessed her share of poverty, need, oppression, injustice. She didn't know why this one story would have impacted her in such a way.

"But something cracked me open that night, and like a foot jammed in a doorway, it wouldn't let me close back down."

And there they were.

Those two words....

Do something.

Seriously.

This small, previously unknown, sale-tagged book is now on my bedside table.