I have joined the long defeat
that falling set in motion
all my strength and energy
are raindrops in the ocean
so conditioned for the win
to share in victor’s stories
but in the place of ambition’s din
I’ve heard of other glories

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It’s too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I can’t just fight when I think I’ll win
that’s the end of all belief
and nothing has provoked it more
than a possible defeat

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It’s too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

We walk a while we sit and rest
we lay it on the altar
I won’t pretend to know what’s next
but what I have I’ve offered

I pray for a vision
and a way I cannot see
It’s too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I pray for inspiration
and a way I cannot see
It’s too heavy to carry
and I will never leave

(”The Long Defeat”, Sara Groves)

—–

Last December, Ben and I sat in the balcony of the Ryman Auditorium, and heard Sara Groves sing “The Long Defeat”. I’ve long found her voice hauntingly and simply beautiful, but this song was spectacular enough to draw tears from me. It still does, but for different reasons.

Groves explained that she wrote the song following her reading of Mountains Beyond Mountains, the story of Dr Paul Farmer, who worked among the poor in Haiti, and still works in international health and social justice.

In late February, I took my job at Outreach, Inc. I’ve never suffered under the notion that the position would be easy, or that it wouldn’t break my heart. We walk alongside youth ages 14-24 who are “homeless or at-risk”. It’s a broad category that includes poverty, generational sin, drugs, lack of education, poor choices, lack of hope, rebellion, prostitution, pregnancy, abuse, neglect, welfare, food stamps, and suffering. Mostly, my job includes the simple walking: lunches, talks over coffee, discussions about their choices, telling kids they can be more than what they are, that they were created for more than this, that they are loved beyond imagination despite whatever they may do to themselves or others, no matter what has been done to them. Any given day, I have shared discussions with my clients over books on apologetics, made up formula for girls’ babies, taken girls to their daughters’ t-ball practice, driven girls to pick up job applications, pled with girls to not do what they are about to do, driven girls to detox, driven kids to the free health clinic, celebrated a new job or the birth of their child, marveled at the fact that sometimes they appear to actually be listening to me. We climb to the 4th floor of warehouses long abandoned by anyone except the homeless, we decend below bridges that the general population would never imagine are inhabited by small communities of “The Invisibles”.

Specifically, I waited over a year to be able to work at Outreach. But really, I waited 26 years. I’ve never had a job I love, even when most days feel like one step forward and three steps back. I’m pretty good at detatching myself when I go home (I do not believe I can be as effective in my job if I cannot ever set it aside to renew my spirit), but it would also be irresponsible in a sense, to separate my life wholly from my work. This stuff impacts each area of your life, simply due to the fact that Love impacts each area of your life. Sometimes love means letting someone do what they will do. Sometimes it means throwing yourself in front of the train. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

I am busy building things these days. Each day, both in my work and in my personal life, I am being asked - called - to build relationships. I have, for quite sometime, failed to see the serious work of “building relationships”. Too often, we see building relationships as taking what comes most easily to us (hanging out with friends), rather than forming bricks, waiting for them to harden in the sun, carrying those bricks on our backs (however long that road may be) in order to build something new, in a place we may not prefer to go. I cannot read the Bible without seeing this picture of calling on all of His children. It’s much, much harder than we would like for it to be. It took Jesus to the cross. I’m not sure why we assume it would not bring our own drops of blood and sweat.

The blood, sweat and tears would be much easier if we could see the pinnacle, if we were assured victory with each of our relationships. But this is never guaranteed.

We spend a lifetime building a marriage that eventually crumbles under the weight of another persons choice.

We raise our children with love and kindness, only to see them spit in our faces.

We spend years walking alongside a friend or relative with an addiction, watch our hopes and their hopes raise with the hope of freedom, only to watch it crash with a devestating blow.

And so, we stare at the bricks on the ground, at what is left of time, energy and emotion invested, that has all fallen. And we walk straight back there and pick up the first brick again.

Because we were never meant to build the wall with our own tools and materials. We came with neither. And we may never get the wall done. We may never get further than a few bricks before other person decides to take their bricks and run. There is no way of knowing now.

But I can’t just fight when I think I’ll win. It’s the end of all belief.

The belief lies in knowing that ultimately, the fight will be won, whether I believe it or not, whether I can see it now or not.

The day is coming…when everything sad will come untrue.

He is teaching me to love.

It’s impossible to leave.