why i cried IN CLASS today.

What this post is not: elegant. fluffy. funny. neat. easy.

What this post is: just the unedited, unorganized, painful truth.

It was hard to write.

What is never far from my mind over here is the raw pain and poignant truth of this: everyday I have to look reality in the face as I walk past person after person after person who does not know my King.

Even harder than person after person after person, though, is that same reality in my friends, my coworkers, my students. In the people I have grown to love like crazy.

Never again will these people just be an unreached people group… they will be individuals who have names and families and life stories, they will be memories of laughter and tears and conversations over countless pots of tea, they will be the faces that will be forever be in my heart and framed on my dresser.

Today was a long day, and a lot of things added to my somewhat fragile emotional state: a quickly approaching deadline for some big decisions for next year, some homesickness, a week of very little sleep (though not for lack of trying), the fact that it’s that time of month when every woman hates being a woman for four days, and just that it’s been an all-around tough week.

Which brings me to today, to this evening, to my last class, to four beautiful university students who are passionate about these things: life and school and teenage boys and fashion and studying abroad and having their picture taken and hating their neighbor.

HATING THEIR NEIGHBOR.

Last week, this country observed the 20-year anniversary of some inconceivable genocide committed against hundreds of innocent men, women, and children by a bordering country. Whole cities were wiped off the map, and expansive, beautiful regions of this country are now occupied by another. There is currently no end in sight to an active war where young men are fighting to reclaim the territory that was taken from their country.

My four beautiful, innocent students do not love their neighbor, this bordering country. They do not love their enemies. It’s actually very much the opposite—they loathe them with every fiber of their being.

This happened to be all they wanted to talk about during our 2-hour discussion class. They spoke with such hate and hardness that after about 40 minutes, a few tears escaped from my eyes, slid down my cheeks, and immediately silenced the room.

Though they would never insist, I could tell by their faces that they wanted an explanation. I told them it was hard for me to hear so much hate in their words and see so much hate in their faces. I told them that when hate fills a person, it hardens their heart and their emotions and they lose their innocence and beauty. It doesn’t take much for hate to define someone’s character, and it’s hard to leave that hate behind and turn to love.

But LOVE? Love softens a person’s heart. Love makes a person shine from the inside out. Love makes a person beautiful, a smile genuine, a personality irresistible.

They could not fathom forgiveness, only justice.

They could not fathom love, only retaliation.

I told them about G’s command to LOVE YOUR ENEMY. We unpacked that statement and figured out what that looks like in the world—how we should show love to someone even though they don’t show love to us, that the people who are hardest to love are maybe the people we should love the most intentionally.

Then the attitude in the room started to change—they SMILED as they talked theoretically about ways they could show love to the nation that they hate. They talked about the fact that just because someone is from that nation does not mean that they agree with and support the actions of that nation. They started to let love creep back into that very hard place in their hearts.

They asked me if it was easy for me to love my enemies, and I told them that often it’s hard, but that I love, and do so joyfully, because HE first loved me. I told them that I wanted so badly to see that love characterize their feelings about their enemies.

Is my loving my enemies obligatory? they asked. Is it something I have to do so that G will love me and I will go to Hvn when I die?

I pulled out my little blue Bbl and opened to Rom 6 23 and talked about how gifts are FREE. Then I walked the Romans Road with those beautiful young women, each wanting to see and read the words for themselves.

Class went over the allotted time, but nobody cared. At their insisting, we continued on through John, and the questions never stopped.

Finally, it was dark outside. They left and I stayed in my classroom on my knees, asking that the words shared that evening would be shared again around their dinner tables and in their classrooms and with their friends.

Once I got home, since I had promised my teammates that I would make sloppy joe’s for dinner, I started cooking. And then I cried my way through making dinner, partly because I had to touch raw beef, but mostly because my heart aches and shatters every day with the reality of the lost and bursts with joy every day at the thought of the HS pursuing the hearts of the ones I love.

Please: join me in asking earnestly for their lives.