Faces

If you have not yet, please read the story of Kate Donahue and Jesus Sanchez. And if you pray, plead. Give if you can. But, listen to the story, because it is more than a story- it is the living, breathing pain of a family that has been hurt. It is more than a story, it is a reason to care, a jolt to stop being so hardened to the suffering of the people we are so privileged to love. 

Newspaper clipping from the Beat Museum
in San Francisco. Another product
of the Beat Movement. Thought it fit
the mood, and have been wanting to share
it for awhile now. 

I’ve been itching to write something quirky and lighthearted. Today is not the day I think. Quite the opposite from how I feel. Flying 40,000 feet above the earth I ache to look down and see a different world. Days like this make me wonder why I’ve decided to dedicate my life to uncovering pain and studying the causes and solutions. Social work does not promise happy endings. It’s days like this I see my mother in me because I feel such brokenness in the depths of my soul, I feel the burden of those I love.

If you’ve ever read The Secret Life of Bees the character May Boatwright best describes what I feel when I step out of my head and look at our world. The Psalms echo through my mind, words of pain and recognition of such depravity and tragedy in our world. It’s too much when we see it all, I become nonfunctional in the face of such great human suffering. From of our first breath, we cry. Pain is real, it is inescapable. Our friends, our family, our loves, ourselves… we confront daily incredible and real broken heartedness. The faces of my friends flash in my mind, those who are close to me. And they are followed by the children who have never been loved, whose faces are unknown to me, by the women who have only ever known touch to be abuse, by the boys whose own father’s face was their greatest fear... and by the humans who have fallen so far, who hurt so much that they lash out and become the abusers, create the abused. Create victims. Perpetuate pain. Break goodness.

I don’t want to see anymore. All of this makes me hateful and angry, tears of sadness turn to rage at the Creator who says He will be there to give us the strength to handle it all as we see how desperately we are. But why do we have to handle it at all? Why do I have to see the ones in my life I care the most for sit helplessly as an uncaring disaster attacks their beautiful hearts?

And then, that small, persistent reminder arises. A nudge at my temper. It will not always be like this. As simple as that. I wish with all that I am that everything was renewed now, that all of the perfection we beg for would take form in the life we live right now. I cannot even begin to fathom sitting in the seat of God, seeing and feeling every single thing that happens to hurt His beloved people, the crown of His creation. I would surely break my promise and wash them all away, simply to stop my own connection to the pain. But the promise holds fast: mercy. There will come a day. Despite darkness, despite the fight, despite rage, He is good. I was reminded yesterday, I do not know the whole story of God’s love for the world. I don’t need to know the answers to know that God still gives breath. And while I breathe I will know and I will see that God is good, that He is love, that He is better. So go the Psalms: tears to anger, anger to rage, rage to brokenness, brokenness to helplessness. Helplessness to praise. Redemption rises.