Pain

I've always believed I feel too much. I've always felt so deeply about things that I never really had any connection to or reason to be effected. Old people eating alone, kids lost in supermarkets, girls crying at the bars, homeless people in the cold, skinny kids wondering where their next meal would come from. All these things I honestly believe break all of our hearts I can never seem to quite get off my mind. I keep stationery in my backpack just in case I get the courage to write a letter to people my heart can't seem to stop thinking about.

Shootings in schools, moms with cancer, opportunities taken from kids to go to college, friends in pain. The list can go on. We live in a broken world and it just seems to be getting more lost as we get older. My heart breaks and breaks for the things that aren't changing and I find myself believing that I can't be the one to change it all, so I don't move.

But my heart still experiences the pain of all these situations. It's always bothered me, these lingering feelings of hurt for situations and tragedies that I can't change. How I can't ever seem to get them off my mind and I'm always thinking of ways I could take action. Completing a research paper instead of being out in the world doing service projects and being hands-on in the healing of others. With all the broken people out in the world, it feels selfish to sit still and work on myself day after day instead of giving away my life to others as we are called to.

But with all this learning comes hope. This time of learning and being surrounded in community is so important. I see my peers learning and bettering themselves to go out into the world and actually change it. I see my peers become my role models and use their voices for good. Seniors who are leaving soon speaking up on behalf of the thousands of kids in the future who will hopefully see UNK as a valid option to further their education. Colleagues dreaming of using their degrees to make the world a better place, not just make a career. People around me who actually want to get out there and do stuff, not just sit back and let others take the lead. I think the world has always needed more than that and I believe our generation is going to be the ones to do it.

The world has never needed us more than it does now. We are broken and so so lost. I want to write this letter as an encouragement to all the feelers out there. Let the things break your heart. Cry with those you love and cry with those who are strangers. Let the things that break your heart keep you up at night. The world needs more of that. We have enough indifference, we need more compassion. Let the things that matter to you consume your mind. Use your strengths and your gifts to go out there and do something in the world, change it and make it just a little better than before. We weren't made to just go through this life without impacting others. We are God's workmanship prepared in advance to get out there and impact the world for Jesus (Ephesians 2:10). To remind one another to keep going and to keep fighting and using our talents to further God's kingdom.

I encourage you to keep going regardless of the fact that you might look a little weird when you care and love others without an agenda, without asking for anything in return. People will question and doubt your motives but the world needs your love more than it ever has. Just start where you are. Start in your families, in your communities, on your sports teams, in your honors organizations, in your classrooms. Get out there and let your heart feel for all the brokenness around us and let it truly change you. Jesus's heart broke for you so let your heart break for the world, let it call you to action. Let's get out there and do the work.

What once was full of sorrow
Your love turned into good
What once left me in pieces
Your strength restored in full