Thirty One

I turned 31 while sitting at a resource fair, telling Haitian asylum-seekers why I couldn’t find them new housing, and why we would have to wait to get them out of their cold, run-down apartments. I explained to them that everyone is moving as fast as they can, that we were there that day mostly to provide blankets and coats and medical care and legal help. But once again, I found myself without clear answers, staring into people’s eyes and telling them why I couldn’t do anything for them. A few days before, I had sat with an asylum-seeker who had come straight to our organization from the airport. Someone had told him we could find him housing. We called the shelter, there were no beds. We gave him a comforter, a coat, warm boots and a pillow. I looked at him and told him there was nothing I could do, that he would be sleeping on the street that night. It was an assault to my faith, a tearing of my soul. But there are boundaries in my work, in what I can and can’t do. Those boundaries have never been clearer than they were in the past few days, and they have never felt more wretched.

I am not the same person I was at this time last year. I was in Paris, then – running face-first into a longtime dream, figuring out how to work with and among refugees. I savored those days, but I wished I had something else to grasp, a knowledge of where it would all end up. Then, in the new year, I found myself in Lebanon, volunteering for an NGO that I had found online a few weeks before. The year began, as I look back on it, on shaky ground — but I saw things and heard stories that will shape me for the rest of my life. I sat with a woman whose husband had walked to Germany to get medical care for his disabled son. I talked to a blind mind who crossed a mountain to find better opportunities. I fell in love with a country – thought I would move overseas – and then everything took a turn.

When I came home I lost my grandmother, and with her my second home. I lost Payne’s and Indiana coffee shops and the Whispy Pine. I lost the guest bedroom, the road trips, the salmon patties. I lost walks with grandma and Buffy to Circle K, and the backyard and the little black squirrel and the porch swing. And I lost her. I lost her laughter and her joy. I lost her lingering presence and her kisses on the top of my head and her spaghetti with carrots in it. I lost one of my core people. I don’t have a lot of core people. To lose one of them felt like a warm knife to the stomach – a knife dipped in honey, because somehow, the grief was sweet. The love was so strong that the tears I shed felt almost golden. I came into the living room of my parent’s house the day before she died, with grandma in her little hospice bed in the corner, and she reached out her arms for me. She was a day away from death, and she still wanted to hold me. It was one of the most precious experiences of my life.

Then I started working in housing. The first house I found for a family ended up traumatizing them – it wasn’t safe, and it triggered their experiences from years of war and death. I met a woman later whose story I can’t tell here, but I heaved up my sobs that night. She had experienced the worst that life had to offer, but she still found ways to make my day. I have discovered, in these past five months, the ache of a broken system, how hard it is, how painful it is. I have seen the holes that cannot be filled, and I am still learning how God fills them. I know he does, but I am tired, and I don’t always have eyes to see. Someday I will write about the dreams that I am beginning to dream; the ideas that are percolating about how we can all help to fill in those gaps - but it is not time, yet.

I turned 30 in Paris. It was delightful and joyous and hopeful. I turned 31 in Columbus. It was real and broken and beautiful. I wouldn’t trade it; I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. But I’m not the same girl who turned 30 last year. I’ve seen a little too much, worked a little too hard, grieved deeply and loved fiercely. I still have dreams, and they’re about as big as dreams can get. But mostly I believe now in action. I still have stars in my eyes, but mostly my feet are firmly in the dirt. I have sobered up; I have seen what life can be. There is a beauty in sobriety, though. There is a freshness of vision, a clarity of direction, a hope not rooted in anything other than divine presence and grace. I believe that people are created in the image of God, but I believe less, now, in the power of manufactured human goodness, and more in the power of supernatural holiness, kindness, and justice that can flow through us. I believe less in social media outrage and more in listening and making tea. I believe less in ideals and more in plodding, mediocre progress. 

Mostly, though, I still believe in love. I wish I lived it better. I wish I wasn’t so rushed that I forget to stop and talk to the women coming into our building for English class and ask how their days are going. I wish I could find a slower pace of work that would allow for more human connection. I will find that, again. I don’t always feel very loving, right now, because I barely feel like myself at all. I am not the same as when I walked into my 30s. I’m a little more broken. I think that’s probably a good thing, as mended people are always more interesting than perfect people. I am tired by the things I’ve seen, and the decisions I’ve had to make along the way. But I still believe. More than ever, I believe — and that is the bedrock that I will continue to build upon.