Last weekend found me standing in line in one of my favorite stores on the planet. I was purchasing something I really wanted, but probably don’t need. I mean, I definitely wanted it, but didn’t need it in a “life will end if I don’t have this” kind-of way. As I stood there casually chatting with a few people I gazed around at all the other people standing in line. The line to check-out was long and even spilled over into the rest of the mall.
The people standing in line were looking slightly peeved and probably more than a little annoyed that they were standing in line on a Saturday afternoon. Most of them were well-dressed, looked to be fairly well-fed and didn’t seem to be suffering any kind of apparent physical conditions. Just normal people standing in line on a Saturday in the mall; just like me.
**And then I promptly had a freak-out.** Cue the shaking, sweating, “I have to run out of this store NOW” kind of freak out. Conveniently my friends bought the “I am just going to find the bathroom” excuse that I whispered really quickly as I dashed out the store. (Thanks to a little creature I picked up in Guatemala last month it is not uncommon for any of us to just dash off to the bathroom–but that is a whole other story!) Anyway, I escaped to the bathroom where I proceeded to talk myself down and pull it together.
The kind of line I am used to looks a little more like this:
Women and children in Uganda walk miles and then wait in line for hours in hopes of seeing a doctor.
I stood in line with hundred of residents from Mianyang, China to look at this. The sight of the tragic earthquake that killed so many.
A line of my favorite Filipino ladies that found Jesus when we were there in Jan 2008.
A line of people mourning the death of their Savior in Antigua, Guatemala last Easter.
Strange to me the things that can trigger memories like this. Strange to me that standing in line in a mall can take me back to standing in line after line with people who were just trying to survive. Most lines I have witnessed over the past two years involve hopelessness, pain and suffering. They are filled with people who need the basics in life: food, water, or medical attention. They are filled with people who have been handed the worst possible scenario in life.
And there I was standing in line in the mall.
I find it getting increasingly hard to balance these two realities. Everything I have read, or heard, or learned about re-entry the past 2 years has indicated that it gets easier with time. I disagree. I have more and more moments of “how can this be?”, I am more and more aware of the plenty that I live in, and I am more and more questioning how I am lucky enough to be born an American. The tension here is that I have a choice. I can choose to live frustrated and jaded, wondering why more people don’t realize what is really happening out in the world, or I can choose to be the change.
Gandhi’s words have become so overused that we see them in greeting cards or hanging in little plaques on our walls, but they ring so true in my heart: “you must be the change you want to see in the world.” It begs the question: am I being the change? Are you being the change? I pray that we are.
