compassion: to suffer with. (and the reappearing of hope.)

i have been blessed, after a few months of somewhat aimless search, with two fantastic jobs. when i say "fantastic" i don't mean something along the lines of manning a ride at disneyland or being a chocolate tester at the hershey factory...i mean something closer to, in one case, holding a sick child to whom i can offer little more than a soothing pat and, in the other, teaching a similar child to take his own medicine and feed himself, and hope to shout that he takes the lesson to heart.

a youth shelter and a coffee shop/youth mentoring program.

the one breaks my heart, and the other has that potential, but thus far has only given me incredible hope.

in the process of meeting these kids and hearing their stories, i have rediscovered that compassion is not a gentle, "aww, that's sad," it is, rather, the heart breaking on the rocky ground of another's shattered experience. walking barefoot through the shards of another's hurt.

compassion hurts; it has to.

i left the shelter at midnight last night, taking a deep breath and almost laughing in shock at how intense the last seven hours had been. my first few shifts were with pretty quiet kids, or at times when the kids weren't even around. this shift was anything but quiet, and the kids were all very, very, present...

...i heard more f-words in those seven hours than i have heard...ever in the sum total of my life.

...for the first time, i had to mediate between a parent demanding to take her child home and a child who didn't want to go.

and when i got home, i went straight to sleep so i could get up and work at the coffee shop this morning at 8:30.

i woke up with f-words streaming through my mind, snippets from the kids' shouted "conversations" last night, and sighed a few times, hoping to clear those things from my brain and praying for the child who had gone home with her mother in an attempt to lift the blanket of overwhelmed/defeated feelings.

part way through making lattes i began to feel frustration and tears bubbling to the surface, but explained it away with coffee-related frustrations, until it finally hit me, like a pile of snow collected on a tree branch that finally gave way over my head: i was heartbroken for those kids.

i made it to my car before letting that heartache spill out in tears, and as i drove home past a playground full of kids my heart broke even more over the probability that at least a handful of those kids had similar stories. more of the kids from the shelter came into my mind and their stories and the fact that this shelter, no matter how much they rebelled against the rules and complained about the chores, is where they feel most safe.

knowing that their homes don't feel safe. knowing that their fathers aren't speaking identity and strength, that their mothers aren't speaking love and beauty. that their sense of value comes from things they shouldn't have even experienced at their age. that i can't fix it. it kills me.

i cried for a good long while, and prayed for the kids, and cried some more.

what do you do with that sort of heartache? i collapsed under it for a while.

(and this is where hope enters, or rather, makes itself known.)


this afternoon i recounted my night to Mark, who leads the mentoring program. i shared my heartache, and my frustration that i can't just fix it. we talked for a bit about the possibility of getting some of the shelter kids into the mentoring program, and then he reminded me of one of the most foundational principles of the mentoring program:

we focus on what we can do, and go from there, gradually expanding our circles of influence.

it closely resembles a great thought from one of Mark's favourite people, John Wooden:

"Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do."

this reminder brought me back to the surface after my morning plunge into the depths of hopelessness. it brought me back to a healthy level of hope and truth.

i can't fix everything, all at once, but i can do something. and i am doing something: being present. and i need to focus on that until i discover something more i can do. and then focus on that. and go from there.

i realized the importance of this sort of heartache, the holy ache for redemption in a broken world. it's the aching of God's heart. and it made me thankful for the opportunity to feel that pain. and be a part of a band of people who are working to change it.



it's so important to feel your heart break over something completely outside of yourself. to hurt simply because someone else is hurting. to learn compassion in a non-theoretical way. to learn to suffer with. and to remember always that you carry the key to hope. that hope is alive inside of you.



there is (was) this fabulous show called Joan of Arcadia, about a girl in high school who meets God face to face. throughout each episode God shows up as different people, some reoccurring through the series, and gives Joan little missions or tasks that teach her things about herself and life and people.
there are a million objections you might have to this premise, but it's a fabulous show, and after my morning cry-fest and my midday hope-injection from Mark, i watched an episode that i had forgotten about, which brought on another small-scale cry-fest.
i won't spoil it for you (because you will watch it, it's called "Trial and Error", from season two, fyi) but at the end of the episode Joan is heartbroken and hurt, sitting on the city bus telling one of my favourite God characters, a sweet but straight-forward old lady, that she will never love again because it gives the person so much room to hurt you.

God puts her arm around Joan's shoulder and replies, "Do you know what innocence is, Joan? Innocence is more than the absence of guilt, it's having faith that there's goodness in the face of cruelty and pain. Some place you still feel that way. And that's me. And I'll always be there."

God is hope. and he is everywhere. and he is in me.
therefore there is always hope, and hope is always in me.
the key is learning to focus on that hope, no matter how it may seem to shrink beside the tragedy, because it will overcome, is overcoming.

always hope.


"the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -john 1:5

"if i say, 'surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." -psalm 139:11-12