But then I realized what it was... I was scared... and still am. I am scared of living an insignificant life.
Going into the last semester of my college career, I am facing a future of decisions. I am beginning to consider what I want to be doing next year and where I want to live. There are so many thoughts that go through my mind every single day and the thought of making an actual decision is simply nerve racking.
But the one thing I do know: I do not want to live an insignificant life and I do not want my passion for Jesus to ever stop increasing.
But I am scared that I will wake up in 20 years, living a mediocre life, with a faint heart for Jesus, behind a white picket fence, living a very typical life. Don't get me wrong, I am not against white picket fences, but I am surely against a life that is not fully intoxicated with Jesus and that is not centered around Him. I do not want people to only realize that I am Christian because I go to church on Sunday mornings... I want it to be evident by the way that I live my life and the way that I love the people around me.
I am scared that the decisions I make will slowly lead to just an average life. Not intentionally, of course, but that it just kind of happens.
I am scared that I will somehow get stuck in a Christian bubble with blinders that has somehow missed the gospel and that my life will be merely centered around what is "best" for me.
The more that I have recognized this fear inside of me, the more that it has shined light on another fear tucked even deeper inside my heart... the fear of a broken heart.
I am not talking about a broken heart that comes from a boy who said something not very nice that can be cured with best friends, cookie dough, and a few tears. I am talking about the kind of broken heart that turns your stomach upside down and that leaves you in utter desperation. It is the kind of broken heart that demands action and response... that kind of broken heart, yea, I am terrified of it.
I was fifteen the first time I remember my heart being broken in that kind of way.
It was at Walker's house my sophomore year of high school that I first watched the original "Invisible Children" documentary. I remember watching the film with Paige and we were both utterly disgusted and torn to pieces. We were horrified that young children were having to walk many miles every single evening in order to avoid abduction by the LRA and lives were being completely obliterated in northern Uganda over this intense conflict. The facts and realities were devastating and my heart broke and I was only fifteen.
That year Invisible Children was putting on multiple rallies throughout the country in order to raise awareness about the tragedy going on in Uganda. The nation-wide rally movement was called "Displace Me." Over a million Ugandans were displaced from their homes as a result of the wars, and the rally was a demonstration to bring awareness to that. The "Displace Me" demonstration involved sleeping outside, with only cardboard, one bottle of water, and saltine crackers. Paige and I, with out fifteen-year-old broken hearts, were insistent upon going.
The closest "Displace Me" event was happening in Washington, D.C. on the Mall in front of the Washington Monument. We begged and begged our parents to be able to go. Danielle, Walker, and Gill decided that they wanted to come as well. Finally, after a lot of convincing, my dad and Paige's dad decided they would chaperone our efforts and accompany us to D.C. as we slept outside (thank you, Dad :))
It was an extremely moving event and I loved every minute of it. I had never slept outside before (not even in a tent), but that night was the night. We slept outside with 6,000 other people and with some little bits of cardboard. We gave up our water and saltines and in order to get any of it we had to walk a certain distance. It was a humbling experience for my fifteen year old self.
My heart was truly broken at that time. I remember talking about going beforehand in my class and some of my other peers could not wrap their head around why I would actually care to do something like that. It made no sense to them and they said that it sounded "stupid" to them. But to me at the time, it was the only way that I knew how to act in response to my broken heart.
But since those high school days, I have become afraid to have my heart be broken like that again. I am afraid to have my heart truly broken because it requires action... and those actions do not always make sense to a lot of people.
I am scared now to really ask God to break my heart for what breaks His because I know that when it breaks, like reallllllly breaks, that it is going to break hard. So hard that it might fall to pieces until I act in response and actually do something... and that's scary.
I am terrified of what the consequences of a really broken heart might be.
I know that when my heart really breaks it's going to cause me to want to do things that people just do not understand and that quite frankly will not make sense to the average person. I want to love beyond my means and that simply just does not seem sensible all the time.
Truth be told, my heart has started to break for a lot of different things. We live in a broken world and the results of that brokenness are everywhere... the sex trafficking industry, the school shootings, the millions of orphans worldwide, and the high school girls with absolutely no concept of self-worth... it is everywhere. Those are just naming a few.
But if my heart really breaks for all of those things I am afraid of being told that I am trying to do too much or that my dreams are too big. I am afraid of people telling me that I am crazy. I am afraid that I will be forever single because my life will never align with someone else's life.
I am so scared of letting my heart hurt that much for all of those different things that I am starting to erect little walls in my heart to keep me from feeling too much. I noticed the walls this past semester when I was in my Holocaust History course. I realized that I was able to effectively distance myself from the material so that I never felt too much. I noticed them again this past week at Passion when we talked about the 27 million people enslaved in the world... the little walls kept me always slightly disconnected so that it hurt and I was moved, but not to the point of total desperation. I was frustrated that maybe I just had a heart of stone... but then I realized that I was more terrified of what it meant to have a heart of true flesh.
But now when I am staring the millions of women being trafficked for sex in the face, I am utterly disgusted and appalled and my heart yearns for those women to know how much they are loved and valued by their Heavenly Father. My heart is desperate for Jesus to do something.
I feel the walls coming down, slowly but surely... they're crumbling and it's terrifying.
Fortunately though, the broken heart chases away the insignificant life.
I am reaching the point that I am realizing that I am going to have to ask the Lord to really break my heart for what break His and when He does I am going to have to be obedient in taking that action.
And when I am being obedient to Jesus then my life will have significance and that passion for Jesus will not die out.
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