Hard hearted

I'm finding that it's really difficult to care about things.

That is, I do care about things, and caring about things makes life harder. A lot of my life has been lost to sarcasm and not giving a damn about people around me or the events going on in my world. It must have been about eight years ago that I asked God to take away the terrible apathy that I felt. I think that's been happening for a few years now, but it feels like it's all catching up with me this week.

I don't exactly regret praying against apathy, but...compassion hurts! Life is better with compassion, but it is also harder in a lot of ways. I find myself thinking a lot about things I didn't commit much time to before. I feel like I'm describing an android getting a soul...here are some things I'm chewing on tonight:

We're taking some disciplinary actions with a woman living at the Timothy House right now. She's being awful to the other women she lives with, picking on them, and generally insulting every aspect of their lives. Obviously, this is not OK and we have a responsibility to protect these other women from abuse. But I keep thinking about the woman we're disciplining. Like many people we meet, she doesn't have custody of her kids. She's disconnected from her family. All of her relationships are broken. She is full of bitterness and jealousy because of her fractured personal life, so she's taking it out on people who have meaningful relationships.

I also feel a lot of pressure about the WALK for the Homeless. It's really, really important to me to produce content that helps walkers understand the significance of solidarity--of voluntarily suffering with people. I want them to feel empathy for their homeless neighbors in a new way, and I don't want the experiences we create to fall flat.

Finally, I'm feeling really emotional about our friend Robert's death. I feel a lot of emotions about his passing, and many of them are in conflict and making it hard for me to work through them in my mind. I miss him. He filled a role in my life that no one else is filling--he was a person with whom I could be honest about embarrassing things. His physical vulnerability invited me to be vulnerable as well. He also had high expectations of me--in the way that parents or teachers do, and his expectations helped me to become a better person. He was also my friend, and maybe my husband's best friend. At times over the past couple of years when we were hungry for companionship, we had Robert. We were faithful to him, and that is good, but he was faithful to us, too. He didn't have to take an interest in us, or buy us steaks, or pick me wildflowers if all he wanted were rides to church or the store. But he didn't want rides; he wanted a friend and we needed one, too. So he wasnt' our pet project. He became family. His life is so devalued when people who knew him a little want to only talk about all the things we did for him. It's not like that. Robert expanded my definition of "friend" and "family." He was a person from whom I learned gentleness and patience. We opened our hearts and our family to him and I feel a loss.

This post is getting long and I need to go to bed. I'm having trouble articulating a lot of my thoughts. I think what I'm getting at is...opening my heart to people is new territory for me. Not totally new, or anything. I'm not discovering America. It's more like negotiating the Louisiana Purchase. Caring is hard, but really good.