Mommies' Dreams for their Children

My sister & baby Addisyn Lael Park 

When I was in DC at the beginning of this week, I got a call from my 8-month pregnant sister who told me she was going into labor. It was a surprise I wasn't quite ready for; little baby Addisyn wanted to come 3 weeks early. Waiting for my sister to deliver was in the back of my head the whole time as I engrossed myself in learning about malaria and the plight of the sub-Saharan African people, hearing stories and stats which I could use as talking in the offices of my senators.

Rose Farhat, a citizen of Liberia and currently a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in DC, told a moving story of growing up and living in a country plagued by malaria. She herself had malaria as a child. Malaria attacks the red blood cells, and in a matter of minutes you can go from feeling good to feeling like your blood is boiling. Rose's mother waited for two days hoping her fever would break, but when it didn't, her family had to find a way to pay for a visit to the clinic. When they went to the clinic, the clinic was out of the vaccine, so she had to be taken to a hospital where her mother waited for hours. Rose remembers mothers all around her crying as their children died in their arms. She said in Liberia a mother's dream for her children is first just to survive childhood and adolescence, but then as mothers around the world would probably agree, a mother's dream is for her child is to provide opportunities that weren't available to her. Rose told us that she was a lucky one. She survived, and since that first childhood fight with malaria, her mother has been fighting for Rose to be something her mother never had the opportunity to be. To not merely survive, but thrive.

I listened to Rose and couldn't help but think about my sister and her dreams for her baby girl. I don't think in our country a mother's dreams for her children is limited to merely survival. I think from the first time most mothers in our country hold her baby, she is flooded with dreams not limited by lack of access to health care or basic needs of food, water, and shelter. I know my sister, and even I as an aunt, have great dreams for our little girl, Addisyn--dreams that assume not only survival but thriving in a life full of opportunity and potential ready for her to seize.

I pray our government will continue to support the work being done through our foreign aid in such places as sub-Saharan Africa. I pray people of faith will think about mothers all over the world, mothers like Mary, the mother of Jesus, who deliver babies in a broken, hurting world torn apart by famine, disease, war and violence. Together, as Rose reminded me, we can help mothers' dreams come true. This Christmas season, consider giving to Imagine No Malaria; your gift may just make a mother's dreams for her children come true. Can there be a better present than knowing your gift is saving lives?

Visit ImagineNoMalaria.org today.