An American RN learns to Read With His Heart and Not His Eyes

Frequently a close friend of mine, a young physician in Haiti, posted comments on a Web and Facebook page associated with a volunteer medical organization I co-founded to improve access to Child and Maternal Health Care in rural Haiti through the creation of sustainable Haitian run health care and of which he is the Medical Director. Here is a recent post he wrote after a week-long rural medical mission sponsored by donations from our organization:

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You know what is important in humanitarian actions. I find it's great: One hour of time you give. One dollar you give. A charitable gesture you make. An act of generosity you make. One support you give. sometimes these are things that are not important to you. things that does not detract from you, your personality, your wealth. Can change or save the life of a person. someone you know or not. in your area or not. in your country or not. what a beautiful love .... we read in the Bible Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of these brothers, you did for me.' Participate with us in this great love.

Now one may perceive this as poorly written, lacking the professionalism one would expect from a physician. However once you realize my young physician friend is a native Haitian; Haitian Kreole and French his languages of birth and choice- English a distant third, would your opinion be different? Each time he posts his comments, I always worry the message he is posting may be poorly understood or simply get lost in translation by our English speaking/reading audience. Even I find when I read his notes my American education sometimes blinds me to the actual message as I struggle to reconstruct the words into grammatically correct sentence structure, paragraph form, punctuation etc... blah, blah, blah! (My apologies to all my former amazing English teachers, current friends who are English teachers, and of course my amazing "word-smith" wife.)

But what I have learned is not to read with my brain. This time try reading the same message- but this time, read with your heart...so... breathe in... breathe out...and read on...

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You know what is important in humanitarian actions. I find it's great: One hour of time you give. One dollar you give. A charitable gesture you make. An act of generosity you make. One support you give. sometimes these are things that are not important to you. things that does not detract from you, your personality, your wealth. Can change or save the life of a person. someone you know or not. in your area or not. in your country or not. what a beautiful love .... we read in the Bible Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of these brothers, you did for me.' Participate with us in this great love.

When I read it with my educated academic mind it was a very nice, sincere message...when I read it with my heart, it brought tears to my eyes...

Lesson learned "Always read with your heart".

Thank you my young physician friend- not only are you a great healer and a great man, but also a great teacher...