Like Mother India, I have groaned and grieved
Father, forgive me, I forgot Your grace
Your Spirit falls on India and captures me in Your embrace
-Caedmon's Call, "Mother India"
Those lyrics haunted me this morning on my ride to work. "I forgot Your grace." Has described my life exactly these past few weeks, months.
What is your burden? That thing that you can't not do... That thing that follows you around and nags you, the subject that raises the hairs on your arms and makes you lay awake at night. That thing....that thing that makes your heart hurt and your mind race. I think there are so many "things" floating around in my head these days, and it's difficult for me to identify my burden.
To frame it in a very loose manner, I love people. I am drawn to people in crisis, people who have been thrown into difficult circumstances. It began my freshman year with the women in the domestic violence shelter. All of those women have such beautiful souls- they deserve nothing more than happiness and love. But for the majority of them, life had thrown curve-ball after curve-ball their way. Growing up in poverty and abuse creates a cycle in the lives of many people- more poverty and abuse. For some resilient and determined women, the shelter was an avenue of success and freedom, but for many, it was merely a rest stop in the continuous cycle of pain. Seeing their children suffer that same lifestyle hurt me in more ways that I can say, but I was always encouraged by that one determined woman who took every opportunity that she was given.
Then came the Sexual Assault Center. I can't stay away from crisis! These victims presented an entirely different story of pain. The depth of pain that a survivor of sexual assault endures is unlike anything I have ever seen. Freedom and control is taken away from those victims in one incredibly horrific moment. Because whether the encounter is vicious and violent or a date rape, it is all about control, and having your control ripped from you is one of the most painful experiences. I admire those brave women and men who step forward with stories about sexual assault. The pain and agony I've seen in victim's eyes are only matched by the determination and bravery I see in the survivor who has overcome that pain.
And now, this summer. I spoke with DFCS about interning with them and then with another child emergency shelter in our area. Both of these areas would be directly involved with children in crisis, and by golly, I landed right in the middle of it all.
The woman I work for serves as the director of social services and also works for State and Family Connections. Those two roles contain a lot of responsibilities. Basically, our office connects service, faith, business and government in order to serve our county's families. I have worked with Local Workforce Development to bring people out of generational poverty, have been through Cultural Diversity workshops and learned about serving and understanding various populations in our county, and have been priveledged to sit in on multiple cases with children that the court has deemed incompetent. I have met countless individuals who all have similar hearts of service, and I have enjoyed it all.
The people in pain that I see from my desk at the office is varied day by day. I have seen idiotic parents who don't give a damn about their kids and only want the check that comes in the mail. I have seen people who are so desperate that they are crying on the phone trying to get help, having never asked for it in their lives. But I have also encountered those people who feel that the people who want to help owe it to them to help them. The unfortunate thing about your heart breaking for those in pain is that you constantly have to filter your compassion, realizing that people will run right over you.
So my burden is people. I went to work with my friend on a Habitat for Humanity house on Saturday, and I was overwhelmed with emotion, thinking about the fact that everyone deserves decent housing, and that some people "play house" in the cardboard boxes or shacks that they call home. I am devastated that so many don't have the gift of a secure home, and I am more devastated that so many more don't realize the gifts that they have. I try to recognize my blessings daily.
It's difficult to describe the amount of responsibility that I feel towards people. It makes my heart hurt so badly sometimes. I don't know what capacity I will be able to serve people in, but I hope I'll come to the end of my life and feel as if I accomplished something. The thing about is, I must never feel as if I am serving "those in need." I think the hardest thing about service is bypassing the mindset that these people are less than you and that you have something to give them that they could never obtain themselves. I never want to serve people like that. I pray that my service is created out of my love for people and my desire to see them happy, never out of my pity for them. Compassion, not pity.
I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
-Marian Wright Edelman
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