Heavy Heart

I have had a lot on my mind today and my heart is heavy. I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but the internet is exploding with updates about KONY 2012. If you haven’t watched this video yet, you should. It is well worth 30 minutes of your life. It has sparked in me an inner conversation about passion and purpose that I feel like I must express. 

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To me, the video is about so much more than a bad bad man who must be caught and brought to justice. It is about a movement - people getting behind a cause they believe in and refusing to be silenced. It is about becoming one voice and shedding light on injustice and bringing hope to the invisible children in Uganda and all across Africa.

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I came home from South Africa in 2009 with a fire in my belly to change the world. I had dreams of going back to Cape Town and telling the world about the people I met - their tragic and beautiful stories that would otherwise go untold. Slowly but surely, my life went on. 

            I got a job. 

                   I got engaged. 

                           I got comfortable. 

But it was like my life was in a constant state of reverse culture shock. I could not reconcile the things that I had seen and the stories I heard with the abundant life in America. I saw so much greed when I came home and so much entitlement. But I told myself that I had to get over it and get on with my life. I felt like I was wasting time and disappointing God by not being able to come to terms with what He was trying to teach me. It sent me into a downward spiral of depression and guilt. 

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I started meeting with a mentor and I would sit in his office and just cry because I didn’t have words to express what I was feeling. Eventually we were able to have speak and he challenged me with the question: why? 

Why did life have to go on the way it did before I went to Africa? 

Why was it okay to go back to “normal” life? 

The short answer is, it’s not okay. 

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Because I have the knowledge of injustice in this world, it is my responsibility to do something about it. Now, we could debate for hours exactly what that should look like, but the fact is 

I am responsible.

                                                                                                  

I think that is why people are so up in arms about this video and the whole KONY 2012 campaign. They don’t like for their little worlds to be opened up and exposed to these things. But here’s the thing - this world has extremely dark places that cannot be escaped or explained away. 

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And we have a choice. We can either choose to stay informed and speak out and take action, or we can choose to sit idly by allowing our complacency to dictate our lives. My choice is to stand. It is to be a voice for the voiceless and to empower the powerless. This whole thing teaches us that we can respond. We can move. We can change reality.

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This is my passion. This is my calling. And it is my earnest prayer that my life will plant seeds of peace and justice.