Friday, July 5, 2019

A heart for this world

I had another  attorney ask me awhile back if I needed therapy to deal with the things that I see in this job. I told him that my therapy was in writing.

Which is true.

It’s also in my friends.

In my family.

In my faith

In my amazing co-workers.

I do need therapy, honestly I think that everyone does, but it’s to deal with things that happened long before this job did.

We had a speaker one night in the seminary class I took this last semester. She made the statement: “You wouldn’t have a heart for this world without your heart having at some point been broken.”

That is true for many of the people I know who do the work that we do. They, like I, do have a heart for this world. Especially for those within it who are wounded, or hurting, or considered less than. We have a heart for the least of these. Because our hearts has been broken. We have been wounded. We have been the least of these. And for the past 20 years, I have worked with children who have been through the same.

Many of the attorneys that I work with have become jaded by the work that we do, by the people with which we work, by the things that we have seen. I get it. I really do. I’m not sure why that hasn’t happened to me. I’ve thought maybe it’s because I work with so many social workers in this line of work that they have rubbed off on me over the years. And that could be it, in part. But I think the quote above, sent to me by my chosen sister, is much of the reason.

And so, after a difficult week, and a difficult week to come, with stories of children who have been harmed and broken by those who should have loved them the most, I pray to still have that heart.

Let me never be hardened by this world.

Let me never become jaded by this work.

Let my heart never stop breaking for the things that break God’s.

Let me always love deeply.

Let me always care.

Let me always have a heart for this world.

Let me never stop fighting for the least of these.

Whatever my career, whatever my title, wherever my place.

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