Worn Out

Worn out

I love what I do here. I love waking up with a different day ahead of me. I love spending most of my time being a kid or being with children that fill me with laughter and smiles that stretch from ear to ear. I love knowing that I never know what a day holds me and that surprise after surprise awaits me. But, despite how much I love being here, sometimes I just feel plain worn out.

When I think about the enormity of some of the issues that Honduras face, I sometimes just want to give up. Despite differing degrees of poverty throughout the country, there are many giant issues that plague Hondurans on a day to day basis. For example, over 70,000 people suffer from HIV/AIDS in Honduras. For the ninth year, Honduras has had the highest population of HIV/AIDS sufferers in the Western hemisphere. Does that number even shock you? Do you even realize the enormity of that number? We visit the Casa Pasionista, a home for those suffering with HIV/AIDS or the sickness as they call it here and we spend time with maybe 7 internos—I think that means that we spend time with a 1/1000 of the people that suffer from the sickness in Honduras. Are we even scratching the surface?

Illiteracy is another issue that is just so huge that it easily becomes overwhelming. As a child, I was brought up being read to most nights and loving the magic of escaping into a new adventure each night. It breaks my heart that there are so many children who cannot read. We visit Corralitos, an aldea, and we have started bringing books to lend to the children. Today, when we visited one of my favorite houses where almost 11 kids live, I lent out books to 4 or 5 of the children to later find out that only the 2 oldest who were not there know how to read. We have another little boy who is 9 nine years old and cannot read. What is the point in lending books out to children that can’t read? Shouldn’t we be addressing the bigger issue of illiteracy?

And so in day to day work, it can be very discouraging to look at the big picture. When there is a desire to help, a sincere genuine desire to do something for the betterment of lives, it can sometimes seem plain pointless. Will bringing books to aldeas even begin to start addressing illiteracy? Will one year spent in a town make any difference in the lives of Talangans or mine? Will one support group for domestic violence victims do anything to alter the cultural acceptance and silence towards domestic violence? In asking all these questions, my mind suddenly went back to an Oscar Romero prayer. He says,



“It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realzing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders;

Minsters, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not of our own.”



My hope is that I might be able to keep this prayer in the fore front of my mind, but right now, I just feel completely worn out trying to be the worker.