By Erin McKenna
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Lord, how can it be? How can you desire to use one so weak and broken like me?
My heart is desperate. Desperately, I want so much more. Please Lord, be a God of so much more. Change me. Soften me. But please dont leave me. I need you…
My stomach drops every time I look into the eyes of these sweet children. My heart screams! It breaks open and I cant help it. I dont want to help it. I want it to smash to pieces every time I see their curious faces weighing the motives of my heart for entering their world.
My prayers are spilled. I know a Father who provides for all of my needs. My eyes cry along with my heart. Daddy, daddy! Where are you? What are you doing here? What are you doing in me? Daddy, I want to take care of these little girls. I want to take them home with me, love them, tell them how special they are to me.to you.
Ive become a crier. I really cant look at people without feeling for them. I try to hide the tears. To feign indifference. To pray without engaging my heart. But I cant. The reality of the Cross and the sacrifice that Christ made there have become so real in me and in my heart that I can hear my Father cry, I want them. The ones the world will have nothing to do with Jesus cried from the Cross, I want them! My heart-cry resonates something similar.
I want them. I want the broken. I want the lonely. I want the forgotten. I want the children and their grandmas. I want the handicapped. I want the scorned, the oppressed, the neglected. Give them to me. I will carry them in my heart. I will pour love out on them. I will show them the great mystery of grace, mercy, and love that has changed me. I will cry for them. I will spill my heart for them. I will lay down my life so they might find abundant life.
Im done. Im done with living life in an attempt to please man, to keep everything together, to look good on the outside while my heart turns to stone. I cant go back. I can never go back to where I once was. I know too much. The tears are too sweet. The reckless abandon is too satisfying.
The reality of Jesus Christ is too consuming. The knowledge that I never had, but now live in, has become too much for me to ever want to go back. My heart is so full. Life was meant to be lived this way. We were meant to live alive.
Erin McKenna, of Crown Point, Indiana, is a member of a media-based project focused on documenting the travels of a group backpacking the globe.