strong vs weak

I have been thinking about strong vs weak a lot over the past week.
Last Tuesday we opened Pandora's Box so to speak when we started teaching on domestic violence.
I don't think that there is room in poverty for weak women.
The weak just don't make it. The fight to make it everyday.
I often ask myself if I could live the life they live? Without any hesitation I say no and don't want to ever be in the place where I have to find out if I could or not. I think to be a woman here you have to be strong beyond what we can understand. From an American stand point it makes teaching about domestic violence hard. I mean, really, what do you say? Go to a shelter, call the police, get counseling, stay with a friend. There are no shelters, no church programs, counseling for what they would say and staying with a friend when they all have too many children and all live in one room anyway - right.

So now the box is open and once it is open you can't shut it!

Last week we read a story about an abusive relationship and did some role playing afterwards.
In the roll playing Tara and Marjorie started fighting about getting home late from shopping and getting beat for it. When we asked questions about the situation being good or bad, the whole room said, she should have gone earlier in the morning so he wouldn't be mad at her and hit her.

You could feel all of our hearts sink, holding back tears as we took a deep breath understanding we had a lot of work to do.

One of our mom's and former sewing school students came to us and told us her heart breaking story about her "husband" beating her up leaving bite marks all over her body. Why? Because her daughter had a small amount of swelling on her arm from a routine vaccination. This is all very normal but he wanted her to got the hospital, she was going to try a salt compress first.

When I was a teenager my mom used to work at a hot line for domestic violence. As our mom told her story I could hear my mom's funny way of saying... that's what you get for thinkin' rolling around in my head. It was all to familiar, she had crossed an invisible line with him. A line that is blurry and moves. She would pay the price for doing what she thought was right and thinking on her own.

It seems unfair and overwhelming to me to add this very real problem to the list we are already working on. STD's, HIV, lack of education, poverty and no jobs. We have asked the Lord to make this house a light house in our neighborhood and it looks like that is just what He is doing. We will continue to tell ladies the truth, look for programs already in place here in Haiti and take this one step at a time.