just like Heather

Heather is a woman w/ a teenage son, a loving husband, and more volunteer commitments than she knows what to do with.  Heather is just a character in a novel, but I feel just like Heather sometimes...

"When was the last time I did anything for somebody who couldn't possibly do anything in return?
Do we ignore the downtrodden portion of humanity because we're too busy with everything else, too tired, to preoccupied with our own families and our churches?

But maybe there's more.

Maybe we're frightened that we'l bend beneath the pain we'll feel for others, that maybe we'll buckle under the atrocities some of God's creatures are forced to endure.
And will the God we've worshiped blindly from our cushioned lives hold up under the stress of a world that's bloody and brusied, blind and broken with absolutely no hope this side of heaven?"

Heather wrestles these huge ideas:

"People's souls may go on forever, but I think God wants us to help their bodies and spirits here right now too.

God wants us to care for the poor and the lonely and the sick, not just for their sake, but for ours.

Because in this, we become like Him, growing a bigger heart than we ever thought possible."

And then this lofty desire - is it a pious dream, or a Jesus-like possibility?

"I want to be safe - that place where people can fail and still be loved.  Heaven knows there are enough exhorters and admonishers, enough people with a lockdown on life, enough people who can tell all of us what to do and why and sometimes even how.  They don't need me.

But I want to be the person around whom people don't have to do a thing to be loved."

I feel like a pioneer at the very beginning of that long trek from east to west, with massive unknown obstacles along the way.  I feel just like Heather feels, but the actualization of those feelings will be my lifelong odyssey.

Check out Lisa Samson's novel Quaker Summer for the rest of Heather's story.