It’s the lion we cage, the love and the rage that keeps us wanting more
Isn’t it beautiful the way we fall apart
It’s magical and tragic all the ways we break our hearts
So unpredictable, we’re comfortably miserable
We think we’re invincible, completely unbreakable, and maybe we are
But isn’t it beautiful the way we fall apart?
“We Fall Apart” – We As Human
Nepal is hard.
Today we went into the slums where I played tag with tiny children, took turns picking them up and holding them in my arms to sing Jesus loves you, then held a child until he fell asleep in my arms for about an hour.
I am covered in a stench you could not imagine. There was a river that flowed with trash and brown murk barely to be considered water. The children were in tattered clothing, layers of dirt, and a combination of bruises and boogers. I may or may not have lice. I watched as children abused each other for our attention and affection. Just like the children in the orphanage in Russia.
As I held the child though, I thought about how much I loved every bit of where I was. I love loving children.
But as I walked away, I began to realize how destructive slum ministry is for my heart. There is nothing I could do for them. There is nothing I could say that would change where they lived. There was nothing I could come up with that could take them out of the trap of living that way their whole lives and not being able to break the cycle of having to love so poorly. It broke my heart.
Have you ever loved someone or something so much that it was simultaneously good for your spirit yet slowly killing your heart?
I think of the famous scientist Marie Curie.
This absolutely brilliant woman not only helped pioneer the research on radioactivity, but she was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize AND the first person (and only woman) to ever receive a second Nobel Prize in multiple sciences! If that wasn’t impressive enough, she then became the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris. (Seriously though if you have a minute look this woman up, she is quite a superhero with a laundry list of awards and establishments)
Unfortunately, however, at the age of 66 she died of aplastic anemia. Slowly but surely due to years of exposure to radiation, what she loved the most became the cause of her death.
I also think of the story in the bible of the two women fighting over a child. In 1 Kings 3 the women bring a baby up to King Solomon to settle who is the real mother of the child. The Kings’ solution is to bring a sword and sever the child in half but the real mother tells the king that the other woman can have the child because she couldn’t bear the thought of having her son killed; because of this the King then knew which one was the real mother.
The thought of severing the child in half pained the mother so much that she had to choose to give him up in order to live.
I look at both of these women and feel as if I can relate to both.
Is our only option to give up what we love so we can live, or do we do what we love the most to our own demise?
