It is amazing the things you can take for granted everybody knows and understands…peeling a banana from the stem instead of from the other end…
I don’t know if I should be joyful or I should weep. People ask me what I want to do when I graduate and my answer has been…work in a refugee or internal displacement camps. As I answer, I wonder to myself…sometimes audibly…do I have the disposition for such work. so harrowing…rape and murder and mutilation. That on top of starvation and disease.
During Katrina I wept…after a 12 or 14 hour day i was exhausted emotionally from stories of loss and anguish. What would I do in a place where 12-year-old boys were abducted and killed their parents?
Tonight I watched a special on sierra leone. Rape and amputations, lacking infrastructure and poverty…and I didn’t shed a tear. And though it bodes well for my future work…what does it say of my soul…in my desire to make a difference have I lost a part of me…was it necessary…is it worth it…
I don't think your soul is lost if you recognize the dispair in the situation. What scares me are the people who don't even realize that even if it is happening to people who aren't you, or like you, that it should be abhorred. I also think that you efectiveness is hampered in helping people if you get bogged down by the anguish (yours or theirs). To effectively do that work, you have to be single minded in your objective (to provide the necessary products or service) and the circumstances that lead to you being needed, can't be in the forefront of anyone's mind or you won't be able to do the job.
I know how you feel. I understand your concern. I often wonder how counselors deal with hurtful story after story. One counselor told me that if they didn't fellowship with God they would carry the hurt of their patients with them. The mere fact that you have a passion to help change the lives of those most have discarded says a lot about your soul. You haven’t lost a part of you…sounds like you have discovered something new.
It's definitely a catch-22. You have to care to be there. But caring makes it difficult to do what you need to do. It's a tight line to walk. But to do it, you have to walk it (Walk The Line was a great movie, by the way). I know plenty of co-workers who say they can't do the cops beat because of the gore and violence of it. But by writing about that ugliness, I'm informing and hopefully pushing someone to act. People have to first know about it, to do something about it. That's where people like you step in. You are the action behind others' words.