Die Trying

"It was a draining and depressing year for [Geoffrey]. He felt each morning as though he were going to work in a burning building, as though his job was simply to rescue as many kids as he could from the flames. 'It was almost primal,' Geoffrey told me, looking back. 'We were literally just trying to keep our children alive.' There were plenty he couldn't save; for many kids, the pull of guns and drugs was impossible to resist. For years, he offered martial arts lessons to a small group of young men and women from the neighborhood, mentoring them, hoping to show them an alternative to the violence on the streets, and he became closer to them than any other children in Rheedlan's programs. And then two of his top students told him that they had decided to go into business selling cocaine."

This is an excerpt from a book I'm currently reading for class. It is about Geoffrey Canada's noble fight to save the children of Harlem from the systematic oppression of their poverty level. I have to read it for a writing assignment on socioeconomics.

But this idea...this idea of a career path feeling like a burning building...that's sticking with me today. I think that will resound in me in profound ways once I am meeting with clients I want to "save". The child from unnecessary ADHD medication. The woman from the abusive relationship. The man from clinical depression. The marriage from heartbreak. The family from dysfunction. The human from darkness.

I have a long road ahead of me. I think that may be why I've been consciously preparing the way for this career path for almost a decade now...I've always known this is what I wanted to do. And I'm just now sensing the toll it may take on my soul.

At the edge of the abyss. That image is still with me when I imagine myself hand in hand with a client as they face themselves. All the mystery, the fear, the unknown, the mess.

I'm sensing now that I may witness too many clients dive into the darkness and lose the will to try anymore.

I'm sensing now that I may be tempted myself to lose the will to try anymore.

Geoffrey Canada's story is so moving because his vision - to save the children of Harlem - remained in tact year after year, decade after decade, program after program, failure after failure, during the highs and the lows. I know my own vision - to make peace in hurting marriages/families - is in my bone marrow, and will flow through me until my last breath. I hope to have the same resolve Geoffrey had, and to remember that God works in quiet, gradual, and unsuspecting ways, where I'd rather have glorious one-time-ends-all victories in living out His will.

We're not called to win. We're called to die trying.

Lord give me the strength to lose, to fail, to not know what to do next. Set me free from the fear I feel in those shortcomings, set me free from the lie that my worth is in my victories and my wisdom. Set me free from the shell I crawl into in the face of feeling too much tenderness.

Give me the strength to be weak.

My weakness within the sanctuary of Your love is where I find my true strength.

The strength I'll need to die trying.