How do we sit?

(Before I start, please know that this is not meant as a “what the heck is wrong with you?! Everybody needs to sell everything they have and move to Africa!” blog. I trust that if you’re following Jesus, you have the Spirit that’s guiding your life. I really do trust that. This is meant to simply be a blog of Juliette’s questions and thoughts of life that deeply perplex her and it feels better to share them….)

How?

“There is a garbage dump about 15 minutes from the orphanage facility. The orphanage started a program to go and pick up children who live in the garbage dump to come and receive food and go to school. At the end of the day the kids are dropped by off at the dump to be with their families because they have to help their families earn a living as well. As of right now about 115 kids are picked up every day.”

How can we just sit at home and keep doing our daily life when we hear about things like this?

Or the devastation in Myanmar, where so many children are left as orphans who have watched their house and family be destroyed….

Or how do we hear about women and children who are being tortured and raped and stripped of dignity, love, and identity this very minute that you are reading this blog throughout the world in the sex trafficking industry…..

You know I could keep going ALL day long on this list about children that are forced to enjoy killing as soldiers, people that are stripped of all humanness through physical things that go deeper into the mind and soul, and about people that truly don’t eat for days at a time so no wonder they can’t ALWAYS think or reason very well and we see so much fighting and mayhem in those areas. (and part of me wants to keep going cause its just so heavy on my heart, but I think this will already be a full blown “Debbie-downer” post).

And I could go much deeper on what these external cracks in humanity are doing to the internal thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and souls of each and every one of those people.

Deep, deep, deep wounds. How can they ever recover?

Again we ask, how can we just sit at home and keep doing our daily life when we hear about things like this?

I feel like we, as middle-class American followers of Jesus’ Way, truly do ask this question a lot. And it breaks our hearts. Literally.

And then the craziness of life distracts us and we move on until we are forced to face it again by a story from a friend or the news or something we read. And the cycle continues.

Sometimes my whole body hurts because I hate, literally hate, that I am sitting here right now living this extremely comfortable life, that I didn’t ask for, and some girl in Turkey has already lost all womanhood and worth that she ever had and is presently being forced to act like she enjoys having sex with a stranger. . . and now she may have even convinced herself that its not so bad; that this is what life is about; that sex is nothing and she is nothing….. and she will continue in this life because there is no way out and all she can do is think about her children at home……and she didn’t ask for that life either.

And it is simply and completely unfair. And it enrages me.

Why can’t I take some of her pain? Why can’t the suffering be spread out? And why why why am I still sitting here?

(“answer”: because this is the place God has me right now and I need to be grateful about the blessings he’s poured out on me and I need to get an education so I can go and help people in those kinds of situations because without an education I can’t do as much good—blablabla, you know the drill) (p.s. I get tired of the drill sometimes)

I don’t care how much God is working on me right now and getting through my own darkness and wounds. I know I’m supposed to be focusing on making me whole right now, so that I can fully and wholly pour out to others, but seriously. . . .i mean seriously, when you compare my crap to others around the world, I’m sorry but it is TOO hard to have to sit here and say “let’s fix me” when I could be helping to “fix” those who’s wounds seem MUCH deeper in quality and quantity.

And I know its all equal in the big picture and I know there are different seasons of life and all those other valid points that we use to get us through these moments, but I guess all I’m trying to get at is

I want my life to be about those people.

Now and forever.

I can’t start in the full capacity that I want to right now.

All I can do is hope for a year or two from now when I can make it my 24/7 life.

And I can do what I can here and now.

Don’t get me wrong, I really am trying to live in the here and now. And I’m not just waiting to “do something” or “be about something” in the future. That is a ridiculous college student thought that I got rid of a long time ago.

I’m trying to truly BE with those that are the most broken that I find in Bryan. But honestly, I know I’m not living it out how I want to be.

And let’s not get all idealistic and silly and say, ok now I’m just gonna go live in the ghetto in Bryan and become BFF with some homeless peeps and take care of some orphans and whoooooooooooooo I’ll feel sooooooooo good about myself. And they’ll know Jesus and everything will work out great!

Its. Really. Stinkin. Hard. To. Do. That.

I mean really do that--not just go and hang out with people once a week and give them some material things.

It’s. Hard. Hard. Hard. Hard. To truly be that culturall- appropriate love and transformation that they need.

(But that’s not gonna keep me from trying, in whatever ways possible.)

Back to my original question: how can we sit here and go about our daily, extremely comfortable lives after actually taking notice of, not just groups, but an actual real person, just like you, who is living in complete darkness that we just can’t even try to conceive???

Like even if we try to put ourselves in their position, we’re still missing so much.

I ask myself this. . . and the only answer I have for now is. . .

“One year, Juliette, and you get a job with a non-profit or mission agency and you go to the hardest places and do whatever culturally wise people tell you to do. And you live like the people there. And talk to them. And you learn things that can assist them. And you love, love, love them. And you cry with them. And then you think to yourself, ‘am I helping them at all? It’s just too messed up to actually make a difference. There’s still so much brokenness.’ But then you think, ‘at least I’m doing something. At least I’m being with them. At least I can share a glimmer of hope and love with them….and then one day, hopefully, Juliette, you can adopt children out of these completely broken places and save them from a dark, dark future. And you can be with them, train them, love them, intensely and intimately day after day after day.”

(clarification: when I say “dark places” I mean dark places in America, not just “third world countries.” And I mean dark places that don’t obviously appear as dark places.)

And for now, I take baby-steps (wish they were bigger) to finding and being with the most broken in our city, while I juggle the rest of life that God has told me to do and be.

It’s hard. SO hard to figure out whats the best thing to be doing. How to really get real with these people. But I’ll keep trying. (if you’re reading this, please don’t ever let me stop trying. You are now accountable to me and my life by simply reading this, whether you like it or not.)

And I prepare and learn about the brokenness (all kinds of brokenness) and the cultures that produced the brokenness and ways to counsel brokenness.

I learn how to do this by digging through my own brokenness and wounds; by being around homeless in Bryan who are stinkin crazy and so different from me, but at least I’m around them and learning about him/her; by being around people of different races, different journeys through life, different economic statuses—just straight up different. I learn. I go down the slow process.

And times like tonight, I say to God: “Daddy, I don’t know what to do. I really don’t know how to teach these kids about the abundant life you have for them right now, not when they die. I am ill-equipped. I don’t know how to relate to homeless people who are SO different than me. I don’t know how to change the way they think and treat people. I feel useless. I literally don’t know how. But You do. And I will wait for you to tell me and move in me. I will keep going even thought I feel useless and confused. And I will trust that you will do something or show me something. Because it doesn’t matter what I think I know, it only matters that I have you who knows ALL.”

I have my answer, and that is the only answer I am responsible for and need to think about. But I can’t help but wonder how my other brothers and sisters that follow Jesus answer that question. I don’t doubt that this kind of stuff really breaks them. . . but what do they do with that brokenness? I know every one is made different for different things. I really do know that. But if we follow Jesus aren’t we supposed to go where he went and be with who he was with? (dark places with really broken people)

How how how how can we be so complacent? Why why why do we believe so many excuses?
(pardon me: that was my outrage at the world that just broke out, no one in particular)

(you may notice that I have not even touched on the people who really are not broken when they hear about the tragedies of their fellow humans that, whether they like it or not, they are deeply connected to in ways they are not even aware of; the people that hear about these things and think ‘oh my goodness, that’s terrible! Man, this world is sad.’ End thought. Continue on with their life. I am not touching on them, because I can not even fathom that. It is beyond me; it does not fit into the way God created my personality and my passions. But I know there are things that are messed up about me that other people can not understand. So I don’t know what to do about that.)

What started this train of thoughts is the simple fact that I just can’t handle being so “blessed” in the ways that I am blessed. I HAVE to share my blessings. I have to use them. I have to move with them. I have to, have to, have to share them!

And, I could be wrong, but I feel like that’s the purpose of blessings. You get blessed financially, intellectually, with lots of love, with lots of things for a house, with lots of clothes, with an education, with forgiveness—and you share it with others?

Disclaimer: It is my true prayer that this does not come off as judgmental. These are my honest questions about the world and the human population and how we deal with things. I do not think I am better than others because of the fact that this stuff really breaks me and shuts me down to the point that I want my entire life to be about this. Because the fact is, I didn’t come up with those thoughts or feelings. I didn’t choose to think or feel this way anymore than I chose to have this middle-class American girl life I have. He gave my life, feelings, and thoughts to me, and I am grateful...I guess maybe I choose what I do with all of it??