Brokenness

This has been a very difficult blog to write. I started working on it over a week ago, but there’s just so much that makes my heart so heavy, and every time I think about it I feel very frustrated. Please bear with me if this post doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Last week, I received a message from a Ugandan friend pleading for help. His mom has been battling cancer and is clearly losing. He sold his motorcycle to help with medical fees yet is still struggling to pay for the treatments. He sent me pictures of his mom and it is heartbreaking. It made me really upset that I couldn’t help. If only she had better access to healthcare and resources. It made me question what I’m doing. Is this where my great passions meet the world's great needs? 

“God’s calling is where 

your greatest passion 

meets the world’s greatest need.” 

–Frederick Buechner

(I am afraid to check in on the Ugandan friend because I don't want to know that his mother has passed away.)

At the same time, I have learned so much about the needs of this world. Two weeks ago, my roommate Keren hooked us up with a prescreening of the movie, “Just Mercy.” The film is based on a memoir of the same name by lawyer Bryan Stevenson. After graduating from Harvard Law, Stevenson decided to defend those on death row in Alabama, where he navigated overt and unabashed racism in the legal and political process (wording borrowed from Wikipedia). Here is the trailer.

The film comes out December 25 and I highly recommend it (but don’t watch it on Christmas Day, because it will ruin your day). It was shocking to see that injustice and discrimination still happens today. It blew my mind that it’s happening in my country, the United State of America. She boasts of being the land of the free and the home of the brave. But when freedom is only limited to the privileged, and those brave enough to stand up are put down, I start to question what kind of country I live in. I want to do something to fix it.

After the film, I started reading the memoir. One of the quotations at the end of the book really struck me. It reminded me of this TED Talk I heard when I was a sophomore at SCU. The speaker described the rat race using a cookie eating analogy. She characterised her accomplishments as a never-ending pursuit for larger and larger cookies, only to be less and less satisfied with the cookies she ate. Then she went abroad to teach English in a rural African village. All of a sudden, the cookies didn't matter anymore. 

I don't quite remember the rest of the talk, but she ended it with a quote that stuck with me for the rest of my university days and shaped my perspective while I was abroad:

“May God break my heart so completely 

that the whole world falls in.” 

– Mother Theresa

It's funny that Bryan Stevenson's quote is also about brokenness. It sits in the context of burnout and exhaustion; Stevenson was relentlessly working in a broken justice system advocating for people broken by poverty, war, and disabilities. Stevenson came to realize that in the midst of fighting injustice, oppression, and inequality, he himself was broken by it. There was no way to work so closely to brokenness and not be broken. In fact, he went on to argue that everyone in this world is broken. Perhaps not to the same extent, but we are all broken by the choices we make and things that we never chose to do.

“But our brokenness 

is also the source of our common humanity, 

the basis for our shared search 

for comfort, meaning, and healing. 

Our shared vulnerability and imperfection 

nurtures and sustains 

our capacity for compassion.”

- Bryan Stevenson

Broken. That's who I am. That's who we all are. But we work so hard to tape pieces together and present ourselves as whole and complete, trying to appear as the most put-together person around. But in the process of striving, this wall starts to form around my heart. It becomes calloused and unfeeling, blind to the brokenness within and without. It has happened before, and I don't want it to happen again. Perhaps the prayer is not for my heart to be more broken, but for me to be more aware of the brokenness around and within me. 

Two of the interns were in the Bahamas this week providing aid through Gain, the humanitarian branch of Cru. I ran into one of them at the office on Friday, and he showed me pictures of the disaster and the reality that the people now live in. It hurt to see so many decimated houses and abandoned cars juxtaposed with the beautiful tropical scenery. Even though the hurricane was almost two months ago, the island has not received any imports of groceries; everyone is surviving off of foreign aid (from Salvation Army and the like). There is a shortage of water, and you need a voucher to get fuel for your vehicle. This is the reality of some people's lives, and it's crazy to think that it could have easily been here in Orlando. 

Yes, I am so blessed to be here. I have a car, I have work, I have enough to eat every day, and I can safely walk around the neighborhood. I don’t need to worry about being stopped on the street, convicted for some crime I did not commit because of the way I look; I have a community of people who care about me far and near; and a Heavenly Father who intimately knows and unconditionally loves me. 

This past week, multiple people asked me what I’m thinking for the next year. Will I do a second-year internship? Go on full-time staff? Serve overseas? What does my future hold? How does brokenness, calling, skills, and passions relate to all of this? I was presented with many options, and I thinking about the future makes me so stressed out.

I apologize for these jumbled thoughts. I've been trying to process it for the past week and a half (I started this post October 23rd), and more and more related things keep adding up. And of course normal life never stops. Thoughts and feedback are very welcome :) In the meantime, this is my prayer: