Have you ever had one of those days where you look up from your desk and think… ‘what am I doing here? Seriously. How did I get here?’ I’ve got three Word documents open at the moment. One is titled: Gunshot trauma kit instructions. One is titled: Humanitarian crisis looms in Sudan. And, one is titled: UNICEF Guidelines on soap requests. I have no desire to work on any of them.
I was walking back today from a meeting, uphill, through sand. Geneina is covered with this incredibly fine sand – the kind they fill hourglasses with. The kind that, if it’s piled up, you can’t ever get to the top of because it keeps giving way under your feet. To say it was a walk is an understatement. It was a slog and all I could think of was that this is how Darfur is. No one can get their footing and just when you start to think you’ve got somewhere – there’s a peace agreement, or a ceasefire, or just several days in a row without a crisis or evacuation – things give way and you slide back down to the bottom a bit dirtier and more tired than you were before.
I’m sure that everyone has those days – accountants, lawyers, everyone – maybe without the dirt and the gunshot trauma kit instructions but everyone must look up from their computers at some point and think, ‘is this what I was after?’
Comments
Hang in there, Kelsey. Stay hopeful, and alive, and well, and gunshot free.
You don't know me, but I'm a friend of Julie Suh's. I've been reading your blog every now and then because it was linked to Erin's, and I'd gotten to know Erin through Julie during a few visits to DC and through her blog--ah, cyberculture. ;)
Anyway, I wanted to say . . . well, I'm not sure what I wanted to say. I think what comes to mind is "thanks." Thanks for being there and for writing about it, for being the part of the church that goes where you've gone and does what you do, even when the ends of all of it just aren't clear.
I've always liked this verse that talks about how, one day, basically the whole world is going to go up in a roar of flames, with the sky rolling up like a scroll. And then it asks, "So what are we to do in light of all of this?" And the answer comes, "You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming . . ." (2 Peter 3:10-12).
I like the verse because it says that even in the midst of the destruction it seems like the world is sometimes moving toward, all God asks of us is that we do what's in front of us . . . that we work and hope and wait for his promises to become clear.