I Live In My Heart. I Can't Be Anywhere Else.

I'm feeling the heaviness today, but it's not coming from me. Well, it is, but it's not my depression. My heart has grown heavier and heavier with the sorrow of all the needless killing and death that is going on. Every time I turn on my computer, watch tv, or read the newspaper, that's all I see. 52 dead one day-200 the next. Does it matter that they're Iraquis, Saudis, Americans, Lebanese, Israelis? No. And what about the people who died in the Tsunami in Thailand and the islands around there? Or in Hurricane Katrina? What about the ones who die everyday because they simply don't have any food. This happens in America as well as everyplace else.

God loves everyone and I feel it so much that I can't stop the tears from falling. All of this is so useless, like chasing the wind. People need peace, people need food, people need a place to live, they need to be with their families. They need not to be raped, imprisoned, bombed, held for no reason other than the color of their skin or religious beliefs. They need not to be tortured and humiliated. They need medical attention and medicines that are really labeled to be what they say they are.

Now, I'm not a very political person and you can say all of this heaviness is just that I'm one of those bleeding-heart-liberals and someone who knows something needs to be done, but does nothing. Yes, my heart bleeds. I really don't know if I'm "liberal" or "conservative". I really don't think it makes a difference as long as the right things are done and the people have a voice in what is going on in their own government. Yes. I know something needs to be done. A big, huge, overarching something. I would be lying if I said I knew what that thing was. I have no money to give all those organizations who, in their best conscience, try to help those in need wherever they are.

The only thing I can do is pray. And I pray. I cry out to God in frustration and anger because of these things. Partly because I'm frustrated and angry with myself for not being able to do anything but sit in my comfortable house and pray and partly because I get angry and frustrated with God because it seems sometimes that he just watches and does nothing. I know that's not true, though. I know God is working. I just can't see it. I can only keep praying. I hope that God will give me the chance to put my hands to work doing something. I'm always looking for the chance.

All of this hits very close to home for me. I have close friends who are in abusive and terrible relationships. Addicted to drugs/alcohol/sex-whatever can be addicted to they are addicted to it. I have friends in the sex industry. Right now, I have a close friend, a sister, who is laid up in her house with her abusive husband, half her face crushed and possibly brain trauma from a car wreck because her husband wrapped her car around a telephone pole one night when he was drunk. He walked away with only scratches. She lays there, her whole body in pain, face crushed, ribs broken, arms and legs broken, bearing still the red ring of bruises where he last tried to choke her to death. Yet, I can do nothing but pray and try to be there for her. God knows what I really, really want to do is physically carry her out of there and away from her husband and her addiction to drugs and alcohol. I want to put her, like a baby, in my lap-rock her and tell her "everything is going to be ok because you're safe now", but I can't. I can't because it wouldn't be her choice. It would be my choice for her. If I've learned one thing in all of this working with abused and drug addicted women over the last 16 years, it's that it has to be her choice to get away from all the abuse, drugs and darkness. I can only pray and let her know that whenever she decides to, she can come to me and I will give her the shirt off my back and do everything within my power to help her get well, physically, emotionally and mentally.

God, it's so hard to sit by and watch her like this. She's been the same way for the last 10 or so years. It's hard to pray, "Father, only if it's your will, let her live" because I want to scream at him to let her live because I love her so much.

So I pray.
As much for myself as for her, because if God should choose to let her live and she does come to me for help, I can't be a mental wreck. I have to be strong for her and getting close to God is the only way I can be strong. Also, I pray for myself so that I can let him console me in my sorrow, anger, frustration and not understanding what's going on. It's the same with all the violence that is going on in the world and in my own country. I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I feel like I should be violent in response to the unfairness and cruelness that has been foisted on those who are helpless to resist or do anything about it. And I just don't understand. I don't understand why it has to be this way.

The only thing I can do is pray. So I pray.


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Sixpence None The Richer~Paralyzed

This song was not written about the war going on now, but back in the time of the conflict in Kosovo, but I think it's still appropriate and it touches me still.


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Tori Amos~Time