Thankful.

O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.  Psalm 107:1

 

I remember hearing this story about a Type 1 child in a third world country. 

Type One children in developing countries

The story goes that a group was taking a vial of insulin to this Type 1 child in a village in a country where insulin isn’t readily available.  The child was close to death and they were going to get there just in time.  When they arrived and were handing the vial to the family it was dropped and broke, spilling what could have saved their child’s life.  This is dramatic and tragic, but illustrates what so many families go through when insulin is just out of their reach.  Some families are forced to choose between food to feed and sustain their whole family or insulin to save that one type 1 child.  These children die without insulin.  I’m so very thankful I don’t have to make that choice.

I’m so thankful to live in a country where I have access to the technology and medicine to manage Faith’s disease well, but  I have a love/hate relationship with insulin.  I love that it’s available, but hate that Faith needs it.

Every time I change Faith’s infusion set I have to replace her insulin cartridge in her pump.  There’s always quite a bit of insulin left in it and it always makes me sad to waste it.  I think of those  that are watching their children die without it and how I’m just discarding it like it’s nothing.  I don’t know why, but one day it just hit me… This is what we often do with the life-saving gospel of Christ.  There are those dying without it and yet I go on living and wasting it instead of sharing it freely as if their very life depends on it.  But it does! So, why hasn’t that been making me as sad as pouring out that insulin?