cold and hardened.

i feel this way at times.

i look at various things that happen. walks for cancer. walks against sex slavery. collection against this, marathon against that. Pop stars in support of relief efforts. Teenagers against poverty.

Ack. I see it as all just sympathy fulfillment activities. You know? The sympathetic/empathetic portions of our souls that itches to be satisfied as easily as possible. Is this an unfair judgment? And honestly, almost 90% of the time, I find the action to do very little against or in support of whatever claim/action. I have no research to back this up, but this is how I feel. Don't judge me cause I have all these feelings and never really put in the proper backbone research to qualify my thoughts/feelings. This is me just sharing reactionary feelings to some things.

 I really want to go on missions, I do. But not really most of the stuff that goes on. I want to go with real skill sets and long term. I want to be able to apply my experiences, knowledge, and my abilities to a situation and help others. I don't want to just be somewhere. I understand this might be contrary sounding to faith and pure love/help. Or even the modern church sentiment of just go, pray, be and God will use. I don't find this to not be true. I agree. Except, when I sit here thinking about missions, I really want more.  I want to help people long-term and with skill sets they find difficult to acquire or tap into due to poverty or just because people don't care enough for them.

This just leads me to ramble. I want to live missionally (is this a real word?). I want everything I learn and absorb to be something that I can pour back out into communities and people in positive ways. This gives me a real passion to improve as a person and to learn more. And most importantly, to always pray that God be the motive and center of my life.

But you know honestly.. all this rambling and thoughts, when I really look at the core of it all, is because I think highly of myself at times (a mix of arrogance and confidence). I feel like I have so much more to offer than I give at usual mission trips. I also want to be in the thick of things. Not on the outside doing support, raise-some-money marathons. Stick me in the middle, make me aware of the realities, and let me a direct agent of change in that reality. That is my hope.

But really more than belief in myself, I've always believed God can do great things through me if I allow Him.

With all this said, I have nothing really against any of the things I mentioned. Well, maybe, personally I do. But nothing at all against the people involved in it. I really admire what people are doing. Keep it up. Personally, just for who I am, I just want to be involved differently.