This is Where I am Slapped Out of my Pity Party

I personally have spent over 8 hours on trying to sort out ObamaCare. Does anyone fell my pain?

I have been filling out forms, making phone calls…I mean, waiting on hold for hours on end…jumping through hoops only to be told that was the wrong hoop, taking original documents to a office that is not even close to my house…

When it’s easier to buy a house than buy health insurance…there is something wrong here.

Still. I am blessed. Blessed that I have access to health care. Blessed I have health insurance options, although limited. Blessed that I can rant and you will listen…maybe. Blessed that I have a car, a phone, a computer, my health, my kid’s health, food on the table…just plain blessed.

So, after another day of dealing with this insurance nightmare I was having a pity-party-for-one. (And, maybe cried a little bit out of frustration.)

Then, I picked up a book I received for free from Gospel for Asia called “No Longer a Slumdog. Bringing Hope to Children in Crisis” by K.P. Yohannan.

I am nobody
Worthless my life is
To Untouchables I was born.
A Dalit child my fate sealed.

I was born in slums
Rights? We have none
To upper-caste our lives we owe
Slaved to serve all their wish.

Poverty and hunger
Is all I ever knew
If there is hope
Tell me how?

What is my future?
Do I have any?
It all looks so dark
An I wish I was not born.

Nothing will take the whining right out of you like reading this poem written from the perspective of a child living in the slums of India. It was a much needed slap in the face.

STARTLING STATS* | More than 150 million children (4 – 14 years old) are involved in child labor. At least 1.2 million children are sold and bought into prostitution / sex slave trade every year. In India alone there are 11 million children who have been abandoned, 90 percent of them are girls. Three million end up living on the streets, doing whatever they need to survive. Children.

I’ll stop whining now.

*Stats found in “No Longer a Slumdog”, sources include Gospel for Asia, UNICEF, and Operation World. Get your free book from Gospel for Asia here.