Why Me?

I usually ask the why me? question when something unfortunate has happened or somehow affects me. But I asked this question for quite a different reason last night. Here's what happened.
My neighbor, who is an immigrant from Eastern Europe, told me more pieces of her life story. I dropped by around 5:30 to take her something for her dinner, she being alone for the holidays. My knock on the door interrupted her time with God, but she was delighted to have me visit and offered me the padded kitchen chair. She sat at the edge of the wooden chair, thrilled to have someone to talk with. We sat in her stark little kitchen with two space heaters aimed at us. One small light fixture hung over the kitchen table where she had been listening to a recorded sermon in her language. Her Bible was spread out in front of her and she had several devotional books opened on the table.
Every time we talk she tells me more of her life story. I think I have a pretty clear sketch of most of it now, and this is why today I ask, why me?

Why was I born into an intact family where I was wanted and in which there was enough to eat? Why was I born in a part of the world where there was no war, where I was not a refugee, never went hungry and always had a warm bed? I have never had to move to another country to avoid religious persecution, losing all my meaningful personal effects. I have never been demoted from a well-paying, respected job to beg for work given to people who cannot speak English and who are considered unintelligent because they can't express themselves. I have not been made fun of because I had no money and my clothes were ragged. My life has not been a ceaseless grind just to survive.

I have not been abandoned by a spouse who took all my belongings and left me with nothing and a young child to find a way to feed. How did I ever get so fortunate to marry a wonderful Christian man who is faithful to me? I have never had children, but there may even be blessing in that. As my neighbor told me the excruciating story of the death of her young son, her hands shook and she fought back tears. I marveled that I have been spared this pain.

My health has not suffered like another friend who was reduced to gnawing on the frozen legs of dead horses that stuck up through the Siberian snow. I have not been forced to watch my daughters raped by drunken soldiers who were marauding my village. My eardrums have not been punctured by bombs that exploded only feet away from me. I do not have scars from flying shrapnel, or internal scars from having to keep my eyes open day and night just to survive. Yet as my neighbor finished telling her story, she clasped her hands together and raised them upward. "Prrrrase da Lort!" she said loudly. "I have everah-ting now."

Maybe the question is really, why not me? I am not growing old alone. I have a home that is warm, clean, well supplied, with full cupboards, and clothes to spare. There is love and life here, when in so many parts of the world people are dying from lack of clean water or lack of shelter.

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Luke 12:47-49.
I am so fortunate, so blessed. Why me?