I open my eyes to the first glint of sun and can't recollect what day of the week it is ... for a good 5 minutes, on a daily basis. Complete blank. I lay there. The days are running together. I feel a sense of discomfort with life, a loss of the value in each day. The one prior has not improved the next. But before you scream "help" and hatch a plan to rescue me from some impending depression, I'll explain myself.
I am content with my life. Yet, the more I dive into social work, the more I am witness to the ugliness of humans and the exhaustive impact of their actions. This impact is found in their victims in disastrous forms: an ever present fear of abandonment, unquenchable anger, helplessness, ignorance, a mind wrecked and lost to trauma. The very worst is hopelessness, a settled belief that all of life points to pain and disappointment, with no glimmer of happiness and peace in their prospects. The thought, "no hope", is an unspoken cancer.
My discomfort is with the unchanging situation of other lives, and with it a sense of impotence. I hate the existence of this ugliness, but the effort to stomp it out and replace it with love is by far the most difficult battle. More demons rise up in the same life, or a new life is hurt or breaks their silence. It's an arduous fight to transport them to a place of safety when there are millions of miles of heartache to weed through. There are land mines all throughout the path, and to attempt to disarm those mines is to put delicate hearts at further risk. I often ask God: How is it that with so much love in this world so many people are entrenched in hurt? He doesn't provide an answer. But the question draws me ever closer to volunteer work, to love unconditionally at all times.
I wish we would love all people, despite their looks, the content of their speech and the baggage they carry. Instead, we look on and wonder how it could all go so wrong for them, when it's gone wrong for us so many times, just not at the same intensity and in the same way. We speak in hushed tones about their desperate situation. We don't always act. I suppose when we are inclined to act, we feel unequipped and powerless, and so we stand still. I try by the day, but often find those I thought I helped recover pulled back into misery or poor decisions. It makes returning to the task of helping all the more difficult.
There is a light in all of this. Amid my frustration, God whispers the most powerful words. The only words I'll ever need. "Pray." And, "It is not for you to produce the change. It is for me to do. It is your task to be there, to love, to care, to bring me in, to pray." I answer, in the silence where me and Him not only converse but converge, the only thing I can think to say. "OK."
I realize then that when I wake it is my duty to recognize it is surely a new day, a fresh start, another opportunity to fight for wholeness, not just for me but for someone else out there. All is not lost. There is hope. If I don't hang on to this truth and truly live it, how can they?
It's Wednesday, I remember. I get myself out of bed. I've got work to do. I pray.
* On an equinox date, day and night are of equal length. On a solstice (summer), the day is longest and the night is shortest.
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