and then there's reality....

The summer before I started my first year of college I got my heart broken. I remember the day he did it, I remember what was said…and the silence in my house after he left. I just sat there…waiting to feel something. But no tears would come. I remember thinking, “Hmm, this doesn’t hurt that bad, I think I’m going to be ok.” Oh naïve Tara. The next morning I woke up and instantly felt the “break-up pains.” Someone was wringing out my stomach and it felt like my heart was actually breaking. The reality virus was moving through my body.

When I was in 7th grade one of my classmates and friends died in a fire. When my parents sat me down and told me I remember not crying…and wondering what the heck was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I feeling something? It only took a couple of hours for reality to hit. Then I curled in a ball and sobbed.

Reality…what do you wait for? Why do you slowly seep, instead of instantly douse?

I said my goodbyes to the girls last night. They were all telling me not to go, and I was telling them to climb in my suitcase. Hugs for staff. Hugs for the kids. Hugs for the girls. Hugs…all around. I was sad to go for sure…but I was surprised that I wasn’t feeling more.

Jessi picked me up from the airport today. I dodged a couple of questions about the trip, not going too into depth…saying that I wanted to wait to tell the stories because I knew that other people wanted to hear them too, and I didn’t want to tell them over and over again. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure it was real yet, and therefore I didn’t really know what to say about it.

It hit today around 4pm as I was unpacking. “Well hello reality, I should have been expecting you…oh you’re just going to pull up a chair? I’ll sit down then too.”

What am I doing here in this plush apartment? Did I really just take a six hour plane ride and transport into a completely different world? There is CRAP, absolute CRAP going on in this world. There are girls that need love, that need to be told that they’re beautiful and special and deserve to be treated like royalty. There are babies being born to mothers who don’t want them because it wasn’t their choice to have it in the first place. But they dance and laugh and play. These girls DANCE and LAUGH and PLAY. You can take a six hour plane ride and experience maybe one of the most magical things you’ve ever seen. And when you tell them that they’re beautiful or talented…they look at you with this hope in their eyes, like they’re just aching for it to be true. And so now I sit here, in my cushy apartment, with reality creeping in from all sides. And the reality of it is, there’s a huge piece of my heart that didn’t get on the plane with me. It’s like my body just realized, “Wait…there’s something not right here. I’m feeling an emptiness that I’m having trouble filling.”

And then comes the tug of war:

Oh good my heart still works, but oh God…it hurts.

Oh good this passion is real, but oh God…how long do I have to live like THIS before I can live like THAT?

Oh good I didn’t forget as soon as the wheels touched down, but oh God…what if complacency and mediocrity beat out memories and compassion?

Jessi came in as I was writing this, so I shared all these thoughts running through my head…and as I sat here crying, she was so excited. She was excited because she says that this is Jesus moving in me…and it means that I have more love to give… and it means that my soft heart will do more than a hardened one will ever do. She’s right, I think. I hope. I pray.

So thanks my dear friends and family. Thanks for your support, and for caring, and for showing me what real love looks like. I’m gonna need more of that goodness for the next…oh, 60 years or so.