I’m Caving In

Pheto. That sweet boy that stole my heart yesterday.

I’m the leader. I’m the veteran. I’m supposed to be over this stuff. I am supposed to have it all together and have all the right theologies and answers to explain away the pain and hurt we encounter each day. I have been trained for this.

But what happens when all your theologies and answers come crashing down when a little boy named Pheto has a cut on his foot and all he really needs is Neosporin and a bandaid? I don’t have answers for the way my heart broke as I headed into the church to get a first aid kit and a cup of water. I had no answers as I sat and bandaged his foot as best I could, though the sand had already caked into the wound so deep that I couldn’t get it out. He has no shoes.

I sent him off to play again with the rest of the kids, praying that somehow this measly bandaid would hold at least long enough to help prevent too bad of an infection. I turned back to the church to clean up after the small operation, and I was shocked by the way tears sprung up and brimmed my eyes. It’s been years since my heart has broke like this.

It was Haiti.

I was an uncalloused soul, only fifteen, taking in the pain of the third world for the first time through a young feeling heart. I didn’t filter the reaction my heart felt- I couldn’t. I cried and wept with questions that didn’t have answers. I felt the pain that I rightly should have at the way things just aren’t right in this world.

But after years of training and growing up perhaps in ways I shouldn’t have- my heart became calloused when I thought I was just being mature. I was able to explain away why poverty is the way it is. I was able to say “no” to homeless men begging on the streets of Akron. I served the lonely and lost with a heart that refused to cry or loose control. I cared, but only on the surface. It couldn’t go deeper, because my heart would rip apart. My answers held together my heart and protected me from pain. I learned about ‘when helping hurts.’ I knew that empowerment was the only way. But the only way to what? To ward off the poor and lost and lonely, so that I didn’t have to come face to face with their pain and feel it too? Or was it to really see them achieve their dreams and their potential, because the Lord’s heart breaks over the state of theirs? Was I really more mature and grown up because I could say no when a young child asked for my watch, or my water bottle, or the clothes off of my back? Was I saying no because there is a greater yes, or was I saying no to protect myself?

Yesterday all my answers and years of built up walls against the poverty and brokenness of the world came crashing down around me. I was left with nothing but a broken and weeping heart over a twelve-year old boy who just needs a Mama to bandage up a small cut on his foot.

Yesterday my heart broke again, just like when I was fifteen.
See, the callouses only hardened when I became a squad leader and began ministering to the squad. I cared for them, and came along side of them in their journey with the Lord. I was discipling them- and therefore I reasoned that I really didn’t have enough to room to really care about the ministries we were serving. The children, the lost, the widows, the poor. I didn’t have room in my heart. I didn’t have the capacity to care so deeply about all the hundreds of souls I encountered around the world- in Guatemala, in Malaysia…

But Africa has changed things. Or, rather, the Lord has changed things.

I didn’t have capacity to even squad lead, to be honest, when I showed up to Africa. I was at the end of myself, struggling to even get out of bed and do what I was called to do each day. It felt like a constant fight to live and really live each day…. It was a struggle I wasn’t used to. I was tired, so very tired. It’s all my soul could say when I was met with the constant demands of being a squad leader. Small tasks of logistics and budgets and decisions seemed like a ton of bricks where once they were light and easy. My soul was weary and tired, and that only served to further excuse my laziness and lack of passion.

Then one morning, the Lord hit me with revelation.

He is not tired. And ‘love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.’ (1 Corinthians 13)

I had been using my own excuses to justify why this job of squad leading was impossible. It’s month seven- of course I am tired! Of course I am going to feel burnt out at the end of month nine. This job is impossible to do.

Impossible? When has the Lord ever called me to do what is impossible?

No, He says that there are things in this world that are, humanly speaking, impossible (eh-hem, like entering into the Kingdom of God- Matt. 19:26). But with God, EVERYTHING is possible.

It seems so simple, but the truth is that I wasn’t trying to do this thing WITH God. I was trying to do it on my own. And so I was, in fact, met with impossibility.

Because I DO NOT have the capacity to love forty-seven people AND care for the orphans and the widows who we serve. I do not have the capacity to be a squad leader- a medical professional, a logistical mind, a finance master, an administrator, a counselor and a professional traveler. I don’t. It’s impossible. This job is 24/7 and it doesn’t really stop- like ever.

No, I actually in fact CANNOT do that job. And so I was met with the end of myself.
But God said He called me to do this, and that with Him everything is possible. Therefore it is more than possible to love and to care with a source of abundance, because He is my source of abundance. He always cares. And He never grows tired. He endures through every circumstance and He never gives up. Ever.

And so when I am in Him, I find that I have an abundance to give. I have an abundance to love, because He first loved.

And so my heart becomes uncalloused and the walls I have built to protect myself from the impossibility of loving and hurting with those who are broken come crashing down. When I meet the boy named Pheto, my heart actually breaks, because I know my God has the capacity- more than enough love to care for him. And I can fall apart without having the answers, and I can lean in closer to my God when I am met with the pain of this world. And I find that His heart breaks, too.

And I come into alignment with His heart for this world.

For He has called us to give to the poor, to care for the widow and the orphan. To meet the needs of those around us.

And so I will. I don’t have the answers, but I have a God with whom I am in love.
But the more I do this, the more I live, the more I find I actually fall apart instead of having it more together. Perhaps that is a lie of adulthood that we teach each other- who ever said that growing up means you have it all together and you can’t cry when you are met with the pain of the world? Jesus wept when Lazarus died. He felt the pain and met His people in it. It is not weakness to have your heart break, to feel the pain of this broken world. It is actually very vulnerable to feel a pain that doesn’t have answers, that isn’t tied up in a nice bow at the end. And that is the exact place that Jesus comes and meets me. Because He is a person, and He wants relationship- not nice religious people with the right answers. Maybe this is why He wants us to come to Him as little children. Running to Him with reckless abandon when I encounter hurt in this world that doesn’t have answers. Letting Him hold me, letting Him teach me.

This is the way we are called to live. And seven years later, I am again the girl taking in the world and feeling the pain of the broken in this world.
And now I live, compelled by this love, and not by answers.

Hallelujah, I’m caving in.
Hallelujah, I’m in love again.

I have over two months left, and I will finish this Race still wanting more. I will finish this Race, not tired, but compelled by love.