When $100 Feeds 100 Mouths

So Barack Obama won the nomination and Hillary Clinton officially acknowledged her defeat.


The most prominent thought in my mind is this: money.

Was that really our country's best way to spend those hundreds of millions of dollars? A bid for a position of power (one that is no doubt globally potent in its own right). But when they push for elimination of poverty, etc., what about all the money spent to get to the inevitable point where only one continues on. I admit I have no solution for the discrepancy this poses, if there even is a realistically plausible one, but...shit. How many more people could have lived?

Where Did My Baby Go?

Lost passion has come up in quite a few conversations as of late. It's just that I have been feeling so apathetic to everything these days. Things that used to get me so excited about life have hardly served to conjure any emotion or feeling. What issues I coddled as my own passionate points of pursuit have evasively eluded me.

It seems that the more educated (hah, take that with a grain of salt) I become and the more I learn, the more hopeless the global situation seems to get and the more insignificant my role as a potential world changer becomes. I'm taking or have taken quite a few honestly fascinating classes on Latin America this year...am I just becoming desensitized? Reading the news has become a chore I avoid, and merely thinking about street children a nagging obligation. An inconvenient one for which I feel have no time at that.

A myriad more of questions swirl around as I navigate this seeming crux. Is God using this to lead me in another direction, or am I just being stubborn and not putting in the effort? What was I doing before that I am doing differently now? Have I become stoic and even more cold hearted and just plain unemotional?

Whereas before I thought I was so sure about the things I wanted to pursue, so much presently dangles in the air strung by uncertainty. I suppose I do still have time, but now that the point at which I'm expected to figure out what I want to do with my life is fast approaching, I am more unsure than ever and it's starting to freak me out. Where oh where has my passion gone?

As I perused through some old journals, I came across a snippet of a conversation B and I had last summer before he left for Malawi. Here is something he said that really resonated with me and is just so appropriate on all levels these days:

"It's analogous to relationships since everything is relational, us and God, us and our passions. But it's easiest to see in romantic relationships. It's all good within the first few months. Then people either take things too fast and make mistakes/get burnt out...or get bored and bail...or do the hard thing and work it through. Same thing with passions in life and our relationship with God; same three possibilities. It always seems more rewarding to start something new. But it's far more outwardly beneficial to work through the troubles and establish a relationship with your passions that is concrete and can be a foundation to build something upon. Heck, you can even see the problem in baseball. Rookie pitchers and hitters are great until scouts figure out the initial weaknesses. Then it's up to the player to overcome the issues, or get sent back to the minors."

When R&K came to visit, we talked about things we hope for in life, things we want to do, burdens God has "blessed" us with. It was exciting to see God place such different things on our hearts yet have them fit so intricately together in the grand scheme of things like global change. Old passions re-stirred in my heart like buried embers, unseen but still warm after all, and for the first time in a long time, I got excited again about life and social justice and active obedience and pushing for movement in the KOG. I glanced through old, bookmarked websites of street children ministries all over the world, read through some past xanga entries (1 / 2 / 3), watched some video documentaries, and it was still work, but I felt my heart melting a little bit... Oh to feel again.

B later ended the conversation with one of my favorite lines ever:

Personally, I hope I have my heart broken to pieces.

I can only pray for the same.