Getting Older, Growing Younger

A few weeks ago I celebrated my birthday and, as I do every year, I took some time to reflect on what I have learned and the ways in which I have changed in the past year. In most ways, I am still the same old me, but there have, of course, been circumstances and experiences that have molded me in new ways.
I would like to think that I have gained a little bit more wisdom, nurtured the growth of knowledge in my life and become more generous, more loving and more hopeful. Unfortunately, as I look back on my year, what I often seem to find is that along with all the good changes in me, I have also amassed new levels of cynicism, skepticism and caution. While caution certainly has a wise foundation and skepticism normally stems from encountering too much of humanities nonsensical effusiveness, there is nothing that kills joy quite like losing the quiet trust that once held the place of prominence through childlike confidence and hope.
Life is certainly more complex than I ever imagined as a kid and yet as I grow older I am struck by my need to be growing more childlike in faith, hope and love. When I was younger I always dreamed of being on the front lines of helping those whose lives have been shattered by war. I wanted to be there to give assistance to those in need so that they could go back to rebuilding their lives. It seemed so simple.
Now that I am actually on the front lines of assisting refugees and displaced people, nothing is ever as simple as it once seemed. There are partners to chose for the work, corrupt officials to haggle with, seemingly unending needs and requests for assistance to sort through, locations to pick from, and the list goes on… . Delivering aid is never simple either. There is always someone who has been missed and someone else who has cheated the system, and of course there is always the chance that the very aid I am delivering will make the already traumatized people a target for yet another brutal attack. Then, there is the difficult task of getting people back to their normal lives once the disaster/conflict has run its course and people have grown accustomed to the aid. Nothing is simple and cynicism becomes “the soup of the day”. Questions like “Am I really helping” rage in the mind and disillusionment and despair set in. The problems will never end.
The knowledge and theories related to aid work only serve to compile the complexities of already complex situation and pretty soon the very people I have been called to serve become subjects of a great experiment and objects to be tossed about by the world’s tumultuous turning. Love, hope and joy go out the window.
Jesus told his disciples to have faith like a child. In childlike faith we see a Father who is greater than the universe we have imagined and we see Jesus who loves us desperately. We see people with hurt and needs, clambering for freedom from the bondage that has held us all for so long, and we know that we have tasted of that freedom and it is ours to share. We see not subjects or objects but people with names, faces and hopes.
It is so easy to have a job. It is another thing altogether to have a calling and to follow that calling the way a toddler wobbles toward her father’s outstretched and eager arms during her first steps. The footing isn’t so sure but the joy and the embrace of those arms is.
Another year has started for me. Pray that it will be a year of growing younger even as I’m getting older.