So I’ve been at Heartlight now for 3 weeks and it already feels like a lifetime since I walked through the doors of South House. These girls are crazy and sometimes difficult and a little maddening but I already can’t imagine my life without them. Being here has already tested and stretched me beyond what they might ever know. When I came here I knew it would be difficult, I knew the girls would present numerous challenges and I was ready for it. What I wasn’t ready for was the way my comfort zone would be constantly violated.
Being a natural introvert I have to push myself from my natural quiet state in order to make connections, hold conversations, and in some cases, jump into the fire. Every day I am reminded that I am owner of nothing in this world. Every day, every breath, every dollar, every conversation is a gift that I don’t deserve and yet I continue to receive. Maybe I will never get all the stuff out of my trunk, maybe for the next year I will constantly be digging through the boxes under my bed, and maybe I’ll have to give up all the human comforts that I have believed for so long were my right. But that’s ok, because these girls are worth it.
Two weeks ago, four of the girls in our house ran away each for their own reasons but with no intention of coming back. I hope I never forget the looks on their faces when they came back through those doors. It was in that moment that I was reminded that these were just kids who just wanted to go home. Some of them haven’t been home in years because of all the programs they’ve jumped through.
They put on these tough faces around each other, compare stories and compete for the most tragedy because they don’t know any other way to connect but in that moment sitting in the South House office I saw the fear in their eyes, I felt the anger as one of the girls squeezed my hand to keep from lashing out. Deep inside when the world isn’t looking, they’re just children who need to know someone loves them enough to come find them when they run, hold them and let them cry after a phone call home, and take a couple skinned knees and bruised hips just for the opportunity to laugh and use that longboard that’s been collecting dust.
It’s taken a full three weeks to get my mind around this job and I know there’s still so much to learn and experience. Every week things are changing, new intakes come in, kids move up to a new house and out from under my care, kids get pulled from the program, and the kids that stick around are constantly changing as they learn, adapt, fight and grow. But I’m right there beside them doing the same things, showing them it’s ok to be weak and how to handle those weaknesses.
In just a couple more days, I will be finished with my training and once again everything will change as even more responsibility and expectations will be placed on me. I know that my comfort zone will continue to be violated, they will continue to press against it, trying to determine what I’m made of and if I’m different then what they’ve seen in the past. And in exchange I will set out to violate their expectations by being strong enough to stand firm and by making my comfort zone smaller. God has placed my in this peculiar world called Heartlight and every day he fashions my heart to look a little more like his. With every comfort I let go of, and every dream I place in his hands I become a little more like him. And that above all else is 100% worth it.
Comfort is a thing of the past, my desires something I leave behind every time I walk through the door. I don’t get to choose my bedtime, I don’t get to shower every day, I don’t get to dress the way I prefer, I don’t always get to sleep in my bed, or go where I wanna go, I don’t get to sit and chill when the girls do. The girls have a saying they like to use in relation to frustrating things at Heartlight or whenever something doesn’t go their way “10/10 do not recommend”. It often makes everyone laugh despite the frustration and in many ways I can relate, but God didn’t give me this body or this life or these blessings to spend my life at a desk or in a fast food restaurant. In his book Heartlight is 1 out of 1 recommended and his is the only opinion I care about.
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