I have seen things I don’t know how to process. I have seen things that infuriate me.
It would be easy and maybe even understandable for me to gloss over the things I have encountered this year. It would be easy for me to switch on “autopilot” because I don’t know how to absorb any more hurt.
Like the children wearing rags in Mozambique eating the moldy bread we threw out with the trash and licking our tuna cans, also trash.
Or maybe the woman stumbling out of a back room in the bar in Thailand. Her clothes were all askew and she had bruises all over her arms. She slumped down at a table because she was so messed up she couldn’t stand. She looked like a teenager. Maybe she was 20.
There’s also the woman in Zambia. She told us how angry she was at the course of her life. She was HIV positive. she couldn’t take her medicine because it made her sick if she took it on an empty stomach. She can’t afford to eat. She doesn’t have money for food. So she can’t take her medicine.
Or what about the women in Honduras?Way back in month one. It feels like a lifetime ago. The ones living in a safe home with their children. The product of incest and rape.
How do I make sense of these things? How do I allow what I have seen to change me, to challenge me? Do I let it change me?
Coming on the World Race, a lot of people shared a common fear: going home the same. And I used to think that was crazy. How in the world can this journey NOT change me?
But I get it now. I have a choice.
I can choose to let these things change me. I can choose to experience the pain and their brokenness with them, with these people I grew to love. People that are now my family.
Or I can numb myself. I can shut down. I can let it all roll off my shoulders and go right back to a comfortable life in America. And I can reflect fondly on this year as that time I spent traveling the world and volunteering.
But I know even when that numbness knocks on the door, it’s not what I really want.
What I want is to be fully alive. What I desire most of all in this life is to look like my Savior, to love like Jesus and know the depths of my Fathers love. I want to live an open-hearted life. Yes that means sometimes I will experience incredible heartache. But i asked God to “break my heart for what breaks His.”
And I think it breaks Gods heart that children are sold for sex. I think it breaks Gods heart that every day all over the world men, women, children lay down with hungry bellies and empty hearts. I think it breaks Gods heart that his children look for their worth in material possessions. I think it breaks Gods heart that women are desperately searching for a man to tell them they’re enough or that they’re worthy.
And because it breaks His heart, I want it to break mine too.
But shoot. Sometimes, when that is actually happening, it sucks. It’s not pleasant.
I get it. Sometimes numbness is simply survival mode. Because the pain of this world is a lot to bear.
But if I need to switch to survival mode to make it through, then something is wrong. It probably means I’m trying to carry the pain, absorb the hurt, on my own.
And well….let me tell ya, after seeing some of the things I have seen this year, that would surely be more than I can handle. My knees would buckle and my legs would give way to that weight. It would crush me. Body and soul.
That’s why I’m glad I’m not alone. In fact, I’m not the one carrying the weight of this pain. Jesus is. He carried it all the way to Calvary. He is the only reason I can look in to the eyes of that woman in Thailand and have hope. He is the only reason I can still rejoice despite the brokenness that has shattered my heart this year.
But the lesson I have learned is that God is a gentleman. He will not force me to change. Because He loves me exactly as I am. That’s not to say He doesn’t desire my perfection. Because He does. But He will not override my will in achieving that goal.
So friends, what do we choose? We can shut out and gloss over the pain of others, even our own pain. We can numb, we can shut down. But that coldness comes at a cost. C.S. Lewis says it best:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
Or we can choose the pain. We can choose to live open hearted. No matter the cost. No matter the bruises and blows we may take along the way. In fact, knowing pain, makes the joy that much sweeter.
So I choose the pain. I choose to embrace this life and all it holds therein. In all it’s beauty and heart break and laughter and tears. All of it.
I refuse to let my heart be a coffin. I have a choice. I prefer my heart to be a field of wildflowers.
What will you choose?
