How Are You Okay?

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” -Mother Theresa

Several weeks ago I was sharing my experiences abroad and on LA Term with a friend of mine after Church. I told her about Raul, my homeless friend that sat on our route to catch the train, and how incredibly selfless he was. I told her about my experience at an expensive-looking Western Church smack dab in the middle of the most extreme poverty I had ever seen, in Kolkata. I shared with her how difficult and overwhelming, but extremely rewarding, LA Term was for me and my roommate. And all of the sudden she asked me a question that has had me reeling every since.

“How are you okay?” she said.

I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what to say, so I started rambling. I said something about the Lord’s provision and still processing things, but in all honesty I made something up. Reflecting later on the question, I realized why it was so hard for me to answer. “How are you okay?” was a surprising question, because I am not. Still I am learning about pain and oppression, and it is touching me more intimately all the time. And the truth is, I’m not okay about any of it.

I have not had the luxury of going abroad and witnessing poverty only to come home to comfort and prosperity and forget what I witnessed. No, I have gone abroad and seen poverty, and I have come back to the U.S. and seen it again, in my city. I have gone abroad and seen heartache, and I have come back home and encountered broken hearts more desperate than I could have imagined.  I have been forced to reckon with this painful truth: evil has gone everywhere, has touched everyone, and it has put on quite a convincing show of having won.

I have not been successful in compartmentalizing my pain; there are times when it has overtaken me. Still sometimes it is too much, and everything I see looks tainted. I hear many stories about rich white people who go abroad and see poverty for the first time, and they come home changed: ready to give their money and possessions to the poor in other countries, infinitely more grateful for what they have. I certainly saw poverty in my travels last summer, but instead of becoming polarized opposite of America in my mind, the two places became very similar to me. The poverty that I only glimpsed in Kolkata is not so different from the poverty I have had intimate contact with at home. 

Mother Theresa said that “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody… is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” And there are forgotten people on every corner of every city, trapped in oppressive systems that take away their personhood. Poverty does not exist only in third world countries. Poverty, both in its physical and spiritual forms, is lurking everywhere, and those who have not seen it in their homes have lived their lives with the blinders society has so mercifully given them. It is infinitely more painful to see evil in your backyard than it is in a third world country.

Miga is the girl standing in front of me. :)

When I feel overwhelmed with questions, I always think back to India. It was a time in which the Lord showed up so much, but not in ways that I often demand. He was truly embodied in not an earthquake, or a strong wind or fire, but in a still small voice-- in utter silence. He redefined what a miracle is, drawing my heart not to large problems and ambitious solutions, but to brief individual moments in which His love altered the cosmos in order to change a single soul. After studying the noise of marginalization and the messiness of oppressive systems, I am reminded that I must withdraw into the silence to hear God’s voice. In those times, God makes me remember a thirteen year old girl named Miga, whom I met in an orphanage in Darjeeling. She was working in the kitchen when God told me to barge in and see if anyone was back there. It was a little inappropriate, but I just had to go into that kitchen. And there she was. I introduced myself to her, breaking the ice that kept her from coming out and interacting with some of the team and the other girls. I’ll never forget her face when I told her she was beautiful: as if no one had ever said that to her in her life. That moment was a miracle. The condition of orphanhood was not eliminated in that moment. Poverty was not stamped out. A school was not built that allowed her to become successful. But God really wanted Miga to know how beautiful she was. And that was a miracle.

The college men we met in a village near Darjeeling, whom the Lord had healed of greed and apathy were living miracles. The freedom that gave an old woman permission to finally cry was a miracle. The hope I saw in Rozin’s eyes when Jesse held his hand and spoke life to him, who, after being prayed with for over an hour had not been healed of paralysis, was a miracle.

God is the one who breaks the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). This is the greatest miracle there is! The human heart, the most formidable fortress in the universe, is not beyond true and lasting change: but the Lord is the one who does it. While in the Himalayas, God showed me the way His spirit was moving among His people. It was not like a great fire or a strong wind, but more like the mist that floated in through the windows during breakfast each morning in Darjeeling. God’s spirit is surely moving there, but it is not knocking people over with its force. It is gently unraveling the cords around people’s hearts, slowly opening their eyes, reviving the land one single person at a time. God works like this because He is merciful. For if the full force of His love was unleashed upon the world in a great fury, we would all perish. If the great and powerful systems suddenly collapsed under the Lord’s great power, we would all lose our minds. God is loving and merciful, and therefore His miracles occur in the darkest place of all: within our hearts. It is the most beautiful thing in the world, but also the most frustrating for many who want change. But no matter how frustrating it gets, I cannot deny the most basic and inspiring Truth there is: God is here. He has not left us.

This reminds me of a poem by Emily Dickenson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies,

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth’s superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

I am still struggling to embrace the paradox Mother Teresa talked about. But it is my ultimate hope that I someday understand the simple and profound nature of love that she so intimately knew. Right now, I am only hurting. I am frustrated and angry about the way that the world is, and I believe it is ok for me to feel that. I continue to despair and cry out for change, and I believe that someday all of the little miracles might align in such a way that the Big Miracle, Christ’s return, will finally come and bring true and lasting justice and mercy. Until then, here we are, stuck in this place. May we learn to love until it happens.

Amen.

Matthew

I write this to those compassionate hearts who want to help those in need instead of arguing about whether they deserve it or not. If the notion of deservedness is your concern, I ask that you don’t read on, because I am one of those who does not deserve your patronage.

The first time I saw Matthew I liked him immediately. He was young, 30 perhaps, maybe younger. Dressed in baggy blue jeans, a heavy coat, and a canvas backpack, he had a beanie on to cover his mangy long hair. He reminded me of someone I went to high school with, one of the boys I hung around my sophomore and junior years. I could imagine myself hanging out with him: playing hack or going to lunch, everyone piling into the back of my car like we used to every day. I immediately saw his face in my rear view mirror, laughing just like he had been there. As soon as I saw Matthew, he was my friend.

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For a long time I watched Matthew with a strange sense of affection, but I never talked to him. He walked down the aisle of the Blue Line train every night with a Burger King cup and a sign taped to it, asking for change. Unlike the other Metro salesman with clever catch-phrases to sell their candy and pens (50 cents a piece or a dollar for three, candy even sweeter than me! Don’t be shy ladies and gentlemen!), or the persistent men on the street that dish out compliments to get change (That’s quite a sexy haircut, ma’am. Spare a dollar?), Matthew never said anything. He stared straight ahead at the other end of the railcar and walked slowly with his hand barely extended to receive whatever spare dollars or cents might make it into the cup by chance. No gimmicks, no announcements, not even any eye contact. Just a slow shuffle and a blank stare to the other side. He looked just like a person who had lost all hope.

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I saw my friend when I looked at Matthew, like I was gazing into some horrible prediction of the future. It was like seeing my laughing, joyous teenage companion at our high school reunion, and he didn’t have a home or cent to his name, and all of the light had gone out of his face. All I wanted to ask was, “What happened?” And how could I have let this happen to you?

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I finally got to ask him one night when my roommate Kim and I were waiting for the train and Matthew shuffled onto the platform to wait as well. All Kim and I had between us was a five dollar bill and a Ziploc bag half full of almonds and cranberries. So I approached Matthew with my meager offering in hopes of striking up a conversation with him.

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It was the first of several conversations in which Matthew looked to the side as he talked, never meeting my face for more than a second. Something always kept him from looking at my face. But he did talk. He talked about how he got there, and why. He assured me he was going to get out, assured me that he wasn’t “like this” before. But when he came from Seattle to be with his girlfriend who was with child, she disappeared. And when he was robbed and left with no money or I.D., that was it. Now here he was, without a home or a friend or an identity, as far as the state was concerned. A full year had passed and Matthew was still on the street.

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To make matters worse, he had health problems. The next few times I saw Matthew, I noticed that he was in pain. He grimaced each time the train turned and he bumped up against the rails. Nerve problems, he said simply. Lots of pain. I asked him once if he knew anyone in L.A. that he could stay with. He said yes, he is a musician and has some friends here who are musicians also. But he is afraid they would look down on him for being homeless if he went to them for help. Maybe someday, when he got onto his feet again, he would give them a call. He would start playing again. He would play for money instead of beg for it. He would live life without a constant, unavoidable stigma that made him an exception to almost every opportunity. Maybe someday he could live life for real again. Someday, outside of this temporary hell where has no name and no purpose outside of the struggle to survive.

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When it came down to it, I was just another sympathetic passer-by in Matthew’s life, one of the many who will come and go, dropping dollars and cents into his story. No matter how I wanted to help, my presence in his life was temporary and fleeting, only of enough significance to provide a few meals and a few conversations. I’m sure he forgot me the moment I stepped off the train, for $5 and open ears were not enough to give Matthew his life back again. And who knows if I would have, given the chance?  I hope that in the grand scheme of things, from the kind of perspective God has, my role in Matthew’s life did have some significance. I think that it did. But compared to what he needed, I was helpless indeed. When it came down to it, I could not save my friend. I could not give him a home or a job or a committed friendship that would see him through to stability. But someday I will be able to.

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Someday I will be at a place in my life where I am stable, God-willing. I might have a home of my own, or an apartment with an extra bed. And I might have money for extra food and some time away from work. And I hope and pray, I deeply wish, that when that day comes I will see Matthew again, in the face of someone else who needs a little help. I hope that when God asks me if I am ready to be hospitable I answer, “Yes.” I hope that when I am faced with the long, hard task of radical love of the stranger and Biblical hospitality, I rise to the challenge. I hope that I remember my Father’s open arms when I came running home, ready to accept and celebrate a daughter who had squandered her inheritance. I hope this for the whole Church: that we would invest ourselves in others, that we would be generous beyond the reaches of our immediate family and hold nothing back. Because there are so many people who need more than our spare change. When their mothers and fathers fail to, or are not able to, open their arms and their whole lives to them, I believe that it is our job to step into the gap and provide that love, as far as we are able.

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I understand, and I honor, the wish of so many to help those without a home by offering food or money. These are necessary acts of love and they make a difference, they fill the bellies of the hungry in our nation. They bring hope. But $5 a day, spread across the many homeless men and women one may encounter in a day, is a band-aid. I know there are too many hurting people. I know it is impossible to help them all as an individual. But I believe that all of us will have an opportunity in our lives to give more. If Matthew had a room to stay in for free, with a shower and new clothes and three meals a day, an opportunity to look for a job... if only the circumstances of his life would align with another’s in just the right way, I can imagine him being free. This is what I call a miracle. All of us have chances to participate in miracles. Sometimes it’s filling a hungry belly. Someday it might be saving someone’s life by letting God use our resources (His resources) for the good of another. I hope that when my time comes, I am less selfish than I am now.

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At the end of the semester I made Matthew a Christmas card. I saw him on the Blue Line the last time I ever rode it and I gave it to him. He looked at the card through his broken glasses, only one lens, and then he smiled at me, and said “Thank you.” I told him to have a good night and to stay warm, and then I walked home. It was the last time he saw me, but I know it will not be the last time I see him.

Little Girl Shoes

Since I was a little girl, I’ve been telling my dad that when I grow up, I’m going to save the world. I would look at him incredulously when he would reply that Sure, I could change my little part of it. “No, dad, I’m going to save the whole world.” And I was serious about that. As a child it didn’t seem very hard. The world’s “problems” seemed simple and somewhat romanticized, not large, messy, and complicated as I now know them to be.

But even as I grew up, I held onto a piece of my optimism no matter what the world told me. Even as I learned about the complex nature of suffering, poverty, and oppression, somewhere inside I still heard the ten-year-old inside of me echoing, “I’m going to save the world, dad. The whole world.” Problem was, I was taking into my small hands a world that doesn’t belong to me, and it was a matter of time before I realized how small I truly am.

I wouldn’t say that I have learned exponentially more about oppression this semester, factually, than I knew previously. I have definitely learned more than I knew, but not enough to knock me into the despair that I’ve experienced at times. I think it was seeing it up close and not being able to escape that really did it for me. All of the sudden the little girl inside of me looked down for a moment and saw the size of her shoes, and they were not God-sized. They were the shoes of a little child, and they were trembling under the weight of what I thought I could carry.

It has been hard for me to accept my humanity. For some reason, one of the biggest lies I believe is that I am utterly responsible. Responsible for my family, my friends, society... and I feel like a failure if I can’t do something to help. These past few months I have seen and felt so much pain and oppression that I have had to admit, finally, painfully: I can’t fix it.

Now before I make myself out to sound like some sort of suffering servant, much of the responsibility I feel comes from selfishness as well as from compassion. In coming to LA, I thought that I would learn something directly applicable to what I would do with the rest of my life. That’s because I thought the rest of my life would consist of what I thought to be a glamourous career, organizing some movement or helping thousands of people. Part of it was so I could go back home and say “Look! Look at what I’m doing with my life!” I wanted to feel validated, worth something.

But the bottom line is, I thought for sure that I was strong enough to do this. No matter how much I learned about my own gifts and capacities, I resisted them with all my might because they didn’t seem important enough to me. I just couldn’t justify doing something with my life that I might doubt at certain times was helping anyone. So I came into this semester overly-confident in my ability to handle whatever it was that came my way. 

But rather than feeling validated in my desire to “save the world,” whether for compassion’s sake or for vanity’s sake, I instead found myself secretly dreading the rest of my life and what I thought that I would have to do. I could hear God telling me to let it go, but I held on with all my might to my sense of responsibility, clinging to my anxiety like a security blanket that was suffocating me. I wanted to play God, because I didn’t have enough faith to believe that God’s work would continue, with or without me.

I then came to a point similar to Rob Bell’s story in The Gods Aren’t Angry, when a friend sat with him and repeated the words, “You don’t have to live like this,” over and over, until he finally believed it. God told me a long time ago who I was. He’s been telling me over and over, and I believed Him, but I didn’t truly hear the words until this semester: “You don’t have to live like this.” And then it all came together.

I am not the savior. I am not organizer, founder, visionary, or activist. I don’t know who told me that in order for my education to mean something, I have to rock the foundations of society, but I bought it. And I put enormous pressure on myself that was never mine to own in the first place.

I got burnt out so quickly because I was trying to operate in gifts that the Lord has not given me, and I wasn’t trusting Him to take care of His people. Part of the beauty of the body of Christ is that we don’t all serve the same function; we’d be quite an odd creature if that were true. Thank God for the community organizers, activists, non-profit managers, and politicians. I think I can finally be ok now in saying that I am not one of them.

I have extraordinary gifts. I know this because I was created by an extraordinary God who loves me, and He has taught me who I am. I know He’ll use me somewhere, and I pray He gives me the faith to know that He is constantly working, and He doesn’t really need me to help Him run things.  He is awesome enough to want me to work alongside Him though. 

I can’t save the whole world. I say this now, not with the heartbreak and defeat I felt at first, but with relief. Lord knows that I can only do my part in saving my little piece of it, always relying on Him to work through me. I’ve said it before: I am so thankful to serve a God that doesn’t expect me to be the savior.

So now I continue on in this semester and I hope and pray that I can see it with new eyes. All that I’m learning I wouldn’t trade for the world, and it is sometimes heartbreaking, but now I see it as a gift rather than a burden. My optimism has unfortunately run out, but hope now takes its place as I walk through life, proudly sporting the shoes of a child-- the child of a God that truly can change the world.