Choosing

Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant.

Maybe it’s because I’m moving to a different home (yay!!!).

Maybe it’s because I’m me.

But for whatever reason, I feel broken open inside.

Again.

My heart is throbbing with the weight of so much pain, so much sorrow.  Not my own.

Pain of sweet friends who are hurting more than I have ever had to.  Pain at anguish that I could never begin to fathom.

Pain that comes of suffering that we have no words to even describe.

Pain at the world that I brought these children into.  That I am bringing another child into.

I know homeless women.  Battered women.  Hurting women.  I’ve hugged and kissed Congolese women who have been through things we can’t even put into words.  They can’t either.

I have so many people who tell me that I just “can’t let it get to me.”  Because there’s nothing I can do to change it.

I can’t help but feel that I was meant to hurt for those things.  I was meant to feel it, deeply.  Maybe we all were.

Every night, I pray.  I plead for a better world.

I’ll never forget the first time that it struck me…if I truly yearn for a better world, I can create one.  I actually have power and choice in the matter.

If I want these babies to have a bright future, I can teach them to have faith and courage enough to build one.

Regardless of how utterly useless I have felt this summer, that is one thing that plays over and over in my mind.

It’s worth it to stand up and fight, to do my best, to say enough.  Even if I am tired, so tired, it’s worth it to spend my time each day with my children, teaching, guiding, and mostly just loving.

It matters.  It really does.

And it’s worth it to spend every moment of my exhausted, fleeting moments of quiet time doing what I can to reach out and help my sisters, even when I feel like my heart is breaking because so many don’t want to listen.  Because it matters.

It matters to her:

And to her:

And to quite a few others.

They are your sisters, and mine.  And they matter.  Every night I lie there and wonder, what if it were me?  Would anyone listen?

Creating a better world matters.

It matters to them:

I may be tired right now, but I feel like the fire is growing inside again.  I’m so glad.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.  The burning of that fire may be intensely painful, but it moves me to DO something.  And there are very few things that have ever brought me greater joy.

(PS – I hope you’ll join me in a month!)

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