Long, but worth it

My heart is hurting right now.  This is going to be an off topic blog post but my entire body is full of frustration right now and all I want to do is go outside and scream.

This is not about chocolate, which I know I promised, but this is screaming to come out.

Today at church we had a group of five from Christian Baptist Church in New Orleans.  The service was engaging, different, challenging, encouraging and helped me to become more self-aware.  The music was certainly from the heart and the people in their group seemed to be some of the only ones that were being responsive like the pastor encouraged us to do.  He welcomed the “amens” and “hallelujahs” and often times asked for them.  The woman “sitting” next to me was on her feet almost the entire service waving her arms and “blessing” the man that was speaking.

This was so eye-opening for me.

This is a church of 30 some members who’s church was destroyed in hurricane Katrina.  Many of their homes were sprawled across the ground because of this disaster.  And the five of these people that I saw today were completely and utterly thankful to God for EVERYTHING that he has given them and blessed them with.  No matter how small, they were thankful for it all.

This morning I woke up to a text message from a high school friend making me aware of an accident that occurred last night in my hometown.  One of my friends, whom I lost touch with after high school, was killed in an accident.  The situation was that she and another man I went to school with were hit by a drunk driver.  She was killed on the spot and the other man in the car was taken off of life-support right before my Sunday school class started (in which I was supposed to help lead) this morning. There was no alcohol involved in their car.  This is not the first loss that I have experienced and I don’t claim to be close with either of them, but my heart breaks for their family and friends. 

While I was in high school, my school lost a student every year in a car accident.  One year there were two losses and they were two and a half weeks a part from each other.  My high school classmates can attest that we are no stranger to loss.  The question that everyone asks is “why?”  They didn’t do anything to deserve it, and I don’t believe in a God that takes peoples lives as punishment.  (I also don’t believe humans have the right to take people’s lives as punishment.)  So why does this happen? 

So back to the discussion on being “blessed.”  In my Sunday school we normally discuss the sermon and one of the questions posed was “how are you blessed?”  Many people talked about being blessed with security, a loving family, church, knowing where we are going to sleep and where out next meal is coming from, etc. The entire time these responses were taking place, I couldn’t think about these things as being a blessing from God because it makes it sound like He chose this for me and chose these worries for someone else.  My mind was stuck on the people who don’t have security, a loving family (if a family at all,) food, a place to sleep; but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel blessed.  The people I saw in the church service today repeated over and over and over again that they are blessed even though they lost their church, their homes, and numerous family members.  But they are blessed.  God didn’t do this; God didn’t choose whom to do this too.  He doesn’t choose the people in America to have the most money and He doesn’t choose to keep the impoverished countries impoverished.   They aren’t less “deserving” then we are. 

As class went on I was bouncing around in my own thoughts not even knowing where to take them or where they were going next.  I feel like I am being selfish and greedy with what I have.  I am struggling to find the balance between acknowledging my blessings from God and comprehending  why other people don’t have them. If we are thankful to God for what we have, but are not making any attempts to make things better for other people, are we being greedy?  I am stuck with wondering what I can change, to make a difference.  I am left with the thought that a blessing is perception.

Perhaps the most important part of this blog post:

No matter what happens in life, we come in contact with other people.  Our lives are stitched together like an old blanket.  We have good, neat relationships, the fine stitches. We have bad relationships. We have the capability of ruining another person’s day by being grumpy at work, by not saying hello, or even by not noticing another person.  There are holes in this blanket that keep growing larger with wear.  We have the capability to make another person’s day by greeting each other with a smile; by showing them we care.  We have the power to give life, and also to take it away.  It is not God that takes a life before it’s been lived by the hand of another, it is the choices that we make.  For that drunk driver to get behind the wheel of a car, he had to make that choice of crossing another person’s path and literally destroy their stitch in this blanket.  For all of the people who die in a war where we are taught that it is against another country to make things better for us, it is not against another country, it is individual PEOPLE risking their lives fighting other PEOPLE, to kill them! To “defeat” them!”  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?!  We are crossing in the paths of our neighbors on a daily basis in which we have the power to maintain a healthy “stitch” or to destroy it.  We were put on this earth to love and to help one another. 

God put Eve on this planet to be a companion to Adam.  He noticed he was lonely and gave him the gift of a friend.  He gives us little brothers to laugh and play with.  He gives us kind co-workers to make doing that job we hate (but are “blessed” to have) a little more enjoyable.  He meant for us to be involved in each other’s lives, to be COMPANIONS of one another.  He meant for us to cross paths.

But it is up to us on how to carry ourselves across that path.  We have a say in that.

To tie this into the purpose of this blog...my life interconnects with every single person who has come in contact with a product that I buy.  By purchasing a pair of jeans that are sold for $10 dollars that were created in a sweatshop where employees are paid less than a dollar an hour, I am directly supporting this injustice because I want to save money by buying a cheap pair of jeans.  If no one bought these products this wouldn’t happen. 

I would also like to note that this movement that I am doing for myself, is not something that I expect every single person who reads this blog to do.  I am not going to judge someone for buying something or shopping somewhere that I am avoiding.  I am doing this because it is something that I feel committed to and have the means to.  A friend challenged me in saying that most times people buy cheap because they can’t afford anything else.  I accept that in saying they should continue with what they can afford.  I am by no means well off as a young, still in college newlywed, but I have enough that I have the option of choosing what’s better for my neighbors and this earth that was created for us. 

This blog post was written under the circumstances of extreme emotion and unsettlement.  I am feeling angry, sad, and extreme discontent because all I am doing at this moment is sitting on my couch under a blanket because my toes are freezing.  There are things I have missed and there are many things that can be said in response to everything that I have just written about.  You can play devil’s advocate and you can say that I’m wrong with all of this if you want to.   The way that I am doing things might not seem like much, if it is at all, but please don’t make fun of me, give me a hard time, or criticize my actions of not supporting large businesses and injustice when sincerely from the bottom of my heart all I want to do is improve the life of another.  You don’t have to support me, but please don’t bring me down for trying.