At the end of the day it would be easier not to care. It would be easier to have a “sensible” nine-to-five job that gets left behind while you head home. It would be easier to focus on making money, buying a house and creating a sense of security. That’s a goal that is achievable. It would be easier…
It isn’t an easy life. It’s not black and white. It’s messy and it can hurt like hell. But tell me: how do you see a hurting life, have a chance to make a difference and instead let go because it’s hard?
I will tell you I have the best job in the world. And I will mean it. I will mean it even when I am banging my heart up against a wall. I will mean it when the person I am trying to reach is spitting in my face. I will mean it at the end of the day when my mind won’t stop trying to figure out how to help someone who pretends they don’t want it. I will mean it because there is no way I could face myself at the end of the day knowing I might be able to make a difference in a life and I chose instead to care for no one but myself.
It isn’t easy but I didn’t sign on for easy. It hurts but I didn’t sign on for comfort. I could have chosen to follow theatre, photography, retail management. But I didn’t. We get one chance at life. One opportunity. We get to choose how we are going to spend a lifetime. It is easy enough to make a million excuses as to why we should focus on ourselves but when it comes to the end is that how you want to be remembered? Is that what you want your life to be about?
Perhaps it has been written over and over again so many times that it has lost meaning to you but consider Emily Dickinson’s words:
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Into his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
I will not lie – there is a side of me that gets to the end of some days and wishes that there were someone there to cater to me. There is at times a self-seeking voice that suggests that things should be different, that I deserve more, that I am entitled to something because I was willing to care. But that is not the voice of love. It is the voice of one seeking to stop me in my tracks and guide me away from a willingness to love others toward a life focused on getting for my own gain. There is a catch though: I know a life lived for myself alone is meaningless next to the knowledge that I have gotten to be a part of so many stories, so many lives. It might be temporarily appeasing to spoil myself with small indulgences but I refuse to get to the end of this life with many toys and much wealth knowing that I did not leave this world a better place.
It is not easy to keep your focus from slipping back onto yourself once you return home alone at the end of the day after giving your all for those that God brings for you to love. It is not easy to watch those you worked so hard to love go down a path that can bring them to destruction. But what an honor to know that there is a good chance that the hand they will reach for once the chips have fallen could be yours; that you can help them find a place back on to solid ground; that you could be Christ’s love to those feeling so desperately alone.
Please help me to remember why I do what I do when my selfishness tempts me to walk away. I had a great friend who walked such a path of love and light during her days here and as she knew she was dying she reminded me every time she saw me in those last days that I, indeed, have the greatest job in the world. May my voice echo hers as I reach the end. May I know I did not live in vain.
“Oh God, to have reached the point of death only to find that you have never lived at all.” ~ Thoreau
