I just realized that when the time changed this week I somehow set my computer a whole day ahead instead of just an hour... Which meant that I thought I was posting on Wednesday, which would be appropriate anyway, because I feel like I'm a day late for everything this week...
A day late for my nephew's 11th birthday... A day late figuring out how to handle the latest communications curveball thrown at Mercy Ships... A day late editing text for the next fundraising appeal that needs to go to 9 different nations...
Thankfully, Alaska is so many time zones behind that I can still call my nephew and I think he'll forgive me.
The work stuff is a bit trickier... Staring at my screen with a looming deadline on this appeal, I wonder yet again how I ended up with this editorial task. I love wordcraft, but I'm a designer, not an editor. And I hate corporate fundraising letters – wouldn't that make me the last person who should be writing them?
But then... somewhere in the middle of reading about a Liberian girl named Irene who survived a disease called noma and has lived with a disfigured face for 20 years, I forget what day it is. I forget I don't have any real editorial credentials and that the clock is ticking towards 10:00 pm. I forget the conference calls I haven't had time to prepare for and the organizational hoops I haven't jumped through. Politics fade away to petty and so does my perfectionism.
All that really matters is that there are 400,000 children a year being attacked by a disease most of the world doesn't even know exists -- a monstrous infection that is entirely preventable and treatable. What matters is that 8 out of 10 of those children die in agony, their parents watching helplessly. And the 1 or 2 that live, survive horribly disfigured and suffer emotional pain for the rest of their lives... Unless...
Somebody does something.
This imperfect and sometimes dysfunctional organization that I work for is doing something. The flesh and blood people that make up this organization are doing something – at the cost of much more than their blood, sweat and tears, they are trying to make a difference. And they are.
People suffer and die in our world for lots of reasons. A senseless, preventable disease like noma should not ever be a reason.
What matters is that people need to know this – they need to realize this tragedy is happening in their global neighborhood, and they CAN do something about it. Somewhere in between the predictable lines of yet another fundraising letter, is it conceivably possible that the words I choose could help them get that?
Maybe it's not too late.
:: Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them... he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?" God said, "I did do something. I made you." – Author Unknown
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