Hurting people hurt people.

My father always told me this when I was young. Whenever someone did something that hurt me or our family, he reminded me that hurting people hurt people. When we are afraid and angry, we lash out. We go against the natural tendency to love, instead we build walls and break down relationships.

Today I went out to this village. I am planning to start some programs for the community and we were scoping out the current situation before beginning. While we were there, this woman came to us. She started off just talking, then crying. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but came up to her and put my hand on her shoulder while she cried. She quickly moved on to yelling, and arguing with the other villagers. Eventually the small crowd around us dispersed to get away from the drama. Meanwhile this woman went between crying and yelling for maybe 15 minutes.

I asked my boss/friend to translate what was happening. She told me this woman was upset because she did not have a toilet.

A toilet.

Slowly, the full story began to come out.

This woman didn't used to live in this village, her parents did. I don't know exactly what from, but her parents got very sick. They left the village at some point to find relief from their illness. While they were moved out, the organization I work for had come and built toilets for the villagers. Sometime after that, her parents passed away, and this woman moved to their old home in this village. Knowing the culture here, she probably moved out there because it was the only thing her family owned.

So here's this woman. She lost both of her parents and was forced to move to an unbelievably poor village. She doesn't know all of the people in this village because it's not her home. She's drunk in the middle of the morning and fighting with the other villagers, leading to her being even more alone.
She is angry and she is fighting and she has to go to the bathroom in a hole she dug up.

There are times when someone's pain is so raw and exposed that you can't help but feel it too. I could feel the ache she must feel in her heart. The pain that causes her to push people away comes from the loneliness in her own life, the loss she has had in the past few years has put her into a terrible cycle.

In the end, there are three thoughts I can't to get out of my head.

1. This woman needs a freaking toilet. Actually, everyone needs a toilet. It is amazing how much your chances of illness decrease when you have a sanitary place to go to the bathroom. A toilet is a sign of economic development, and it truly is one of the hugest factors in having a healthy life. You guys would be surprised at how blessed you are to have a toilet, to have myriad diseases that you don't even have to worry about because you live in sanitary conditions. 
2. The people in this village are terribly angry and hurt. They have good reason to be, they were sent out of their homes and treated like cattle. They were left in the middle of nowhere with none of their belongings. They truly lost everything in life. Everything. I think they have forgotten how to live without anger. I desperately want to help them see their value again, I want them to feel safe and let go of the fighting in their hearts and homes. 
3. Hurting people hurt people.
   It all comes back to this, doesn't it? People became corrupt because one man unable to love started a genocide that killed millions. Corrupt government sent people out of their homes and robbed them of their humanity. People robbed of their humanity and value fight for survival, they fight until they don't know why they are fighting. Children grow up in homes with constant fights, and they forget how to love.
   And the cycle begins again.
   We cannot let this cycle continue, not in this village and not in our own lives. When people hurt us, we must learn to overcome and resist the urge to hurt others. Maybe if we responded out of our love instead of our pain, we could change the world. 

I'm sorry this is a little scattered guys, I just needed to let it out. Please, let's move past the pain. 

I love my dad.

My dad recently wrote a book. It was an auto-biography of sorts, chronicling his life experience thus far. It reminded me how important my father is to me and the role he has played in raising me. It made me quite emotional, and reminded me that I am able to be on this amazing journey because of his hard work and the example he has set for me. In the worst of times, he taught me true forgiveness and love. In the best of times, he taught me about elbow grease and reaching for the important things in life. I am overwhelmed with gratefulness for having him in my life, and felt the need to write this...

When I was 5 years old I told my father I "felt like nothing but my name". I told him I felt like nothing else existed but my name and I didn't know what to do. He let me sit beside his desk for hours, until the feeling passed and I was ready to do something else with my day. I still get this feeling from time to time, he still sits with me until it passes.

When I was 7 years old I told my father I was going to have a business where I helped people.
I had a dream that led me to believe my calling was to travel the world and help the impoverished. I didn't know the words missionary or volunteer, I only knew that my father's "business" was the thing he spent all of his time and effort on (after family). Rather than correcting me or or telling me the correct words and methods, my dad told me a business for helping people was a great idea.

When I was 9 years old I told my father I was going to start an organization for kids who were homeless, I would call it Home 4 Kids. My dad helped me draw up plans and came to me later that week letting me know he had registered the domain home-4-kids.com for me. I still own that domain.

When I was 15 years old I told my father I wanted to join my city government through something called Youth Commission. When I was awarded a position in the commission, my dad spent hundreds of dollars to fly home early from a work convention in order to be there for my entrance ceremony.

When I was 16 years old I told my father I wanted to take college courses while I was in high school. He helped me register and left a note on my bathroom mirror my first day of class wishing me luck.


When I was 19 years old I told my father I didn't have the will to live anymore, and that I was concerned he would find me dead at my own hands one day. Within that week depression health supplements and myriad books arrived in the mail to help me through these issues. There were many nights where my father let me just sit next to him in his office until the morning so that I would not have the strength to go through with suicide that night.

When I was 20 years old I told my father I needed to move across the world to help the people of Cambodia. He changed his whole life around to ensure that my responsibilities helping run a household and business were taken care of, he gave me the freedom to move away and get a new beginning.

There was so much pain and joy in the years between each of these instances. There were opportunities that my father let go of to support us kids. He gave up everything to ensure our safety, to the point that we were partially homeless for a while and he still made sure we were provided for. He has shown support for me in each season of my life in ways that I needed at those times.

I have never doubted that my father loves me. When I wasn't strong enough to reach for my dreams, he was strong enough to lift me towards them. If I ever achieve something great in my life, it will be because of my dad's example. My biggest goal is that one day, when he is old and gray, he will look back on his life and see the legacy he has left in his child.

Transition

I have a love/hate relationship with transitions, moving on to new seasons. On the one hand, I'm energized by the idea of beginning something new. I feel so driven when I have a new task, a new thing to hope for.

I love seeing teams when they come to Cambodia from other parts of the world. I realize that each and every one of them is at a time of transition in their lives, they are being exposed to something new and becoming more day by day. There is a beauty in that. There is an amazing transformation that happens throughout our lives as we go through the different stages. I think the hope is that when all is said and done we would be more ourselves than when we started.

Yet at the same time, I hate letting go. I recently said goodbye to my friends and family once again. I had to let go of the ease of living in the States and the warmth of being in a home that is full and loud. And if I'm being honest, that was really hard.

I love the new, but I hate letting go of the old. Unfortunately, I can only hold that tension for so long. I need to learn that letting the past be the past is part of experiencing the new. If I constantly live in what was or what could have been, I will miss out on the world changes happening around me in the here and now.

I'm going into a new season right now. I am now the Project Manager for an amazing organization called The Rock Foundation. This will be a very new experience for me, with a lot of room for failure or success, depending on how well I do. I can already feel myself being stretched for this, but I choose to believe it's for good.

So here's to the new seasons, and finally letting go of the old.