The other night I was watching the news. Catching glimpses of the devastation following Typhoon Haiyan. I watched on. Feeling a million miles away.
Then there was a close up of a little boy crying. About the same age as my Tyson. The reporter explained that he and his family had gone without food and clean water for 3 days.
3 days.
Suddenly, inexplicably, I started to cry.
Suddenly I was in a small town in the Philippines, cuddling my little boy in my arms, promising him everything would be okay.
Would it?
How would I explain to him why he wouldn’t see his best friend again? Or that our house was taken away somewhere in pieces and we won’t ever find it?
I felt his mother’s heart as if it were my own.
When I was breast feeding, hearing a baby’s cry would make my milk come in… and not just my own baby’s cry. I’d be walking through the supermarket and feel a sudden gush at the sound of any baby.
I think it’s meant to be that way.
I think that once you become a mother, your heart is open in a way it wasn’t before. It breaks in a way it didn’t before.
Maybe because we’re all on this journey called ‘motherhood’ together.
My heart feels the burden of mums in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. Watching on as their children cry from hunger and confusion.
I can’t be there but my prayers are there. Hovering over the devastation, sending a message of hope and good will.
And I choose to donate because I want to pay forward the kindness I hope someone would show to my family if it were us. It’s the only tangible way I can reach across the ocean and touch the heart of a mum like me, with a child like mine.
If you’d like to make a donation to World Vision’s Typhoon Haiyan Appeal too, just click here and send some love to families in the Philippines. Luke 6:38
Photos: ©2013 Pio Arce/Genesis Photos