What does Dr. Seuss Have to do with Human Trafficking?

When I was in Georgia right after World Race training (July 2011), I stayed with my friend and World Race teammate Caitlin Woodward. Since she worked every day, I had quite a bit of down time. I perused her bookshelves, and found the fantastic book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” by Dr. Seuss.  Since it had been quite a while since I read it, I decided to give myself a refresher course on the wonderful works of Dr. Seuss, and found this gem:

    I’m sorry to say so
    but sadly, it’s true
    that Bang-ups
    and Hang-ups
    can happen to you.

    You can get so confused
    that you’ll start in to race
    down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
    and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
    headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
                            The Waiting Place…

        …for people just waiting.
            Waiting for a train to go
            or a bus to come, or a plane to go
            or the mail to come, or the rain to go
            or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
            or waiting around for a Yes or No
            or waiting for their hair to grow.
            Everyone is just waiting.

            Waiting for the fish to bite
            or waiting for wind to fly a kite
            or waiting around for Friday night
            or waiting, perhaps, for the Uncle Jake
            or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
            or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
            or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
            Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That’s not for you!

        Somehow you’ll escape
        all that waiting and staying.

[Okay, so I really could have just typed the entire book out into this blog, and it probably would make more sense…but I think there are copyright laws or something that prevent me from doing that.]

The first part I quoted up there (and I know, it’s a long way up – just go ahead and scroll back up and read it again. I promise I’ll wait until you do. Done? Okay, let’s move on.) – that first part talks about success, how the subject feels like they’re on top of the world…and then suddenly finds that they’re not the most important or the best or the most sought-after or the smartest. That they might feel like they’re running along so fast no one can catch them, forging their own path, and ready for whatever the world might throw at them, and then all the sudden realize that they don’t know where they’re going, that great path through the jungle isn’t looking quite so much like a path anymore, and that they’re unsure of what to do or where to go next. Everyone has those moments when they realize there is someone better, smarter, faster, stronger, etc. BUT they need to remember that they’re still unique, still have their own special skill sets and talents and hopes and dreams. I think for me this became really vivid when I came back from the Middle East this spring. I know I’ve gone through stages before where I thought I had things figured out, I was writing 5- and 10-year plans for my life, and things were smooth-sailing (and then they’ve almost never turned out how I thought they would or how I wanted them to). Somehow, though, I thought this time would be different. I thought the plans I had made to go back to the Middle East would work out, that there would be peace there, that I’d be able to get all the classes and courses and paperwork I needed done in time to start Arabic school there this fall, or at the latest, next spring. Well, with the way things are looking in the country I was in, and the fact that almost all the foreigners I knew there have been asked to leave or have made the decision to leave, I don’t think that plan was really going to just “fall into place” the way I wanted it to. I had to relinquish control of my future, give it back up to God and say “okay, use me wherever You want. I’ll do my best to be a willing and flexible servant in whatever place You choose to bring me.”

The second part I quoted was probably the piece that stuck out to me the most – the passage on waiting. That “waiting place” is where I feel like I was when I came home from the Middle East (and maybe even before that). I knew there was something there, could sense that something was going to come up at some point that was really going to catch my attention and say “this is what you were made to do,” but I had my own ideas of what that was going to look like. I still had everything planned out in a neat little box, telling God He could work wherever and however He wanted, as long as it fit in my plans. Well, as I’ve learned hundreds of times already, that doesn’t work so well. He is going to work outside my limited concept of time, and so sometimes it seems like I am just waiting, waiting, waiting – for the “right opportunity” to come along, for my “dream job/career/vocation/missionary placement” to open up, for something that looked exactly how I wanted it to look to come exactly when I wanted it to come. And as I read this section, I realized that maybe I’m NOT meant to just sit around and wait. Maybe I wasn’t created to have the title of “expert waiter” (and no, I don’t mean the kind of waiter who brings you food at a restaurant – they can be experts if they want to). Waiting is not the kind of thing God wants me to do. He didn’t call me to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while He was out saving the world through other people, just because the “right” thing wasn’t coming my way. So I actually took seriously the conversation I had had earlier with Laura Meyers about the India Initiative. I prayed and thought and wrestled with the idea of putting off my dreams (since I’m still sorting them out anyway), and helping someone else pursue theirs. The idea of taking on something totally different from what I thought I would do, because I was sick of waiting around for something that fit my little bubble of what I thought I wanted, inspired me and was a bit part of my leap of faith into applying for the India Initiative.

And that final little part, the very end of the story…well, I’d like it a little bit more if it said you’ll 100% guaranteed succeed, but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun to read as “98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed” now, would it? Anyway, that wasn’t what I was getting at. I was more struck by the part that says “kid, you’ll move mountains.” It’s like Dr. Seuss read my mind or something – it doesn’t matter how small you think you are, how off-the-correct-path you think you find yourself, how others see you – none of that matters because you do have the power to do something great, to be significant, to have a positive impact on the world around you. That mountain of human trafficking – well, it’s going to get pushed out of the way by my team and the countless others who are each chipping away at it, piece by piece.  But it’s not going to get taken care of if none of us go – and so that’s why I’m going. That’s why I can’t sit on my butt and wait any more. That’s why I’m stepping out in faith and saying “okay, God, I trust you again to bring in this support, to connect my team together, to use me in ways I never thought possible, to stretch me so far out of my comfort zone that I don’t even know what comfortable is anymore.” That’s why I’m echoing the words of another great writer, the prophet Isaiah, saying

“Here am I. Send me.”