Desire, Limits, and Love

I want to help.
I want to be able to sit down for hours and listen their stories.
I want to be there for the children who are just looking for someone to play with.
I want to teach students something valuable and I want to see them grow.
I want to bring Christ into the lives of the elderly.
I want to be present in times of suffering and remembering those who have passed on.
I want to pray with the children in the way I was taught.
I want to pray with the adults in the way they were taught.
I want to see Christ in all of them.
I want my love to go beyond myself. I want it to reach out to everyone.
I want to help. I want to love...and I try so hard.

However, the imperfect human in me awakes.
I want to help but there are times I can't.
There are times I'm too busy.
There are times I'm too tired and I need rest.
There are times I feel like I have nothing to offer.
Times where the children are thirsty, but my soul is parched like the desert crying for rain.
Times where the elders are hungry, but my body is like a field that has been over harvested and neglected.
Times when the history is screaming, wanting to be heard, and I'm still digesting what it had to say yesterday.
Times when the culture is reaching out to shake my hand, and I'm too busy holding my head trying to keep it together.
Times when a child is calling my name asking a question, and all I can do is sadly smile and say, "I'm sorry, I don't know."

And so I sit in guilt asking, "Why can't I do it?"
I sit in shame asking, "Why am I not more Christ-like?"
I sit in confusion asking, "Why is it so hard?"
I ask and ask and find myself being human with limits.
Limits that I pretend are normal and okay, but it doesn't feel right.
Thus this is the reality that I face. I am limited. I am human.

And while I sit there struggling with this.
The elders share their love by telling me about their life and culture.
The adults who befriend me share their culture and spirituality.
The children who I teach share their innocent love in the pictures and hugs they give me.
The kids down the block teach me how to enjoy the simple things in life.
The community allows me to be present.
The family allows me to show my respect to the member no longer here.
The pole bearers allow me to bury their friend who I never met yet morn for.
The men I've never met before allow me to pray in the dark with them.
And they lift their prayers with mine in the heat.

I receive more love than I could ever return.
I learn more than I could ever teach.
They all help me grow more than I could even begin to help them.
That's when I realize, I'm not out here to change anything.
Yet I'm out here to change everything.

So as much as I cannot do as much as I want to do.
As much as I am far more limited than I'd like.
This is a time for preparation.
For what exactly I do not know.
All I do know is, it is preparation for love.
For we are called to love.
And in the end this is all I want to do.
Is Love.