Compassion Through The Cummins

*”Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven”* Henry Ward Beecher

Yesterday started out kind of rough for me. For some reason, I can’t really even explain, I just felt alone. I felt sad. I felt exhausted. And I wanted to cry. Nothing in particular had happened, I simply felt this sense of melancholy as I went about my morning. I woke up early after not having slept well and realized that once again I’d be leaving home after seeing family and friends for only two days. This has been my life for the past seven months and has become a part of my routine. I arrive at one place, stay for a few days, and then leave again. The dreaded and painful “good-byes” have gotten easier and have become “see you soons” instead. But for some reason yesterday morning it just seemed extra difficult. I love my family. And I think seeing them after being away for over three months made me realize just how much I truly had missed them while I’ve been away. I miss my mom’s caring nature and cuddles. I missed my dad’s jokes and practicality. I missed my sister’s smile and the smell of her hair. I missed my house and the warm feeling I get when I walk through the door and see the familiarity of home. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to have to miss out on hugging my mom and sharing my day with her. I didn’t want to not be there when my sister got home from her day at college. I didn’t want to miss any more birthdays or family holidays or the everyday life at the Topp Castle. I didn’t want to be missing anymore. I didn’t want to be missed anymore. And I didn’t want to have to miss them anymore.

The day seemed to continue in a similar fashion. I felt sad and alone as I worked through team phone calls and check-ins at the Youth Encounter office. At a place where I normally am so happy and excited to see so many familiar faces, I found myself just wanting to hide in a room and cry. For much of the day, as we traveled I sat quietly in my bench seat in our team van and worked on various things. I listened to my headphones. I felt uneasy. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell my teammates how I felt. But I didn’t want to be vulnerable and I certainly didn’t want to actually cry.  So I remained quiet.

Yesterday, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to a new place, especially one in which we would be staying for only one night. It gets difficult only having a few hours to spend with one family and then packing up and leaving the very next day. I much prefer two or three night bookings in which I get the chance to get to know my host family and share more than one meal with them. We arrived at this adorable country house around 4pm. There were two additional housing units from the main house and our team split up by gender and got to stay in each of them. That seemed pretty exciting. They also had three adorable dogs- a Yellow Lab, an English Mastiff, and a Maltese. I fell in love right away with the white little puppy that looks just like the puppy that I will one day own. 🙂 I held her and cuddled her for the first hour we were there and loved every minute of it. There is something special to me about cuddly puppies who want to be held and loved.

When I got inside the house after bringing my personal belongings to our cabin the kids were all downstairs playing Legos with Andrew. I stayed upstairs and talked with my host mom, Eve, and looked at the pictures of her beautiful family that lovingly covered the walls. She told me the stories of her kids and how she had two children of her own who were in high school and college. She had also adopted two other children and was a foster parent for two more. Right away, I admired Eve and asked her lots of questions about the adoption process and the challenges of adoption. I was mesmerized as I heard her talk and couldn’t help but ask more questions and listen intently as she shared her family’s story with me.

It is no secret that the two things I long for more than anything are to be a wife and mother. I can’t wait to fall in love, walk down the aisle towards the man I will spend eternity with, and hold my first child in my arms. I also have always wanted to adopt a child. I feel God has given me a huge gift in having compassion and a desire to better the lives of children. My heart aches when I hear about kids across the world without a family or someone to love them. It makes me feel fortunate to have grown up in such a loving home and it makes me sad to think that many kids not only lack this type of love but also lack basic necessities like clothes, water, food, and a roof over their head. I want to help stop these sad things from happening- even if I can only change the life of a few kids. So, meeting Eve and hearing about how she brought love, happiness, and a stable life to not one but four kids, I was amazed. These kids were loving. They were smart and polite. They were respectful and had great senses of humor. They were affection towards each other, my teammates, and their parents. And I simply fell in love with each one of them. We ate dinner together and quizzed each other on various school things. We giggled and played together. We talked and we watched a movie. Tony was the oldest at eight years old. He was a great older brother and liked to talk and have his back scratched during the movie. Marco was this beautiful ethnic boy who was very affectionate. He traveled back and forth between Heidi, Jenn, and me for hugs and lots of cuddling. During one part of the movie, he held my hand and melted my heart. Then there was Kia. She was spunky and refused to sit still. She danced during each song on the movie and could barely contain her excitement for us being there.  And then there was Lonnie: a vibrant five year old little blonde with big blue eyes who just loved to cuddle with me and have me play with her hair. She was so sweet and her smile brightened my entire day. We ended the night tucking in the kids, praying with them, and putting their nighttime music on.

As I closed their bedroom door, I realized that in the four hours that I spent with these beautiful children, I felt peace, happiness, and so much love. I felt full of God and His love for me, these children, and the world. As two of the kids came and cuddled with me during the movie, my heart just burst. Hours earlier I was so selfish and sad. I wanted to do nothing more than stay at home and continue to love my family. I didn’t want to travel that day and do my job. I wanted to be lazy and comforted and safe within the walls of my home. But God gave me the opportunity to spend a night with an amazing family that showed me so much about love. He reaffirmed that I truly do want to be a mother and have children of my own. I also want to take care of as many kids as I possibly can. I want God to use me to make this world a better place by changing the life of a child and showing them love. I want to be able to cuddle on the couch and teach them about the world. I want to help them become wonderful and caring people. I want to instill in them compassion and a strong faith in God. I want to be a teacher, a role model, a companion, and someone they can depend on.My day may have started out rough and I may have felt sad. I may have longed for the love of my family and wanted to love them. But my day ended by receiving the love of four kids who I had not known four hours earlier and seeing a call to love kids just like them in the future. My day ended with me seeing a need in our world in which I can make a difference. A need that I feel called to fulfill. A need that can change the life of a child. A need that can also, change me.

*”Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility”* Kate Douglas Wiggins

The “I” In Team

*“Individual commitment to a group effort: that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”* Vince Lombardi

From the moment I left my comfy-cozy life with a warm queen sized bed (complete with thread counts that now, I only dream of) and my very own bathroom with plenty of closet, counter, and drawer space and packed nothing but a suitcase full of the necessities for one year and jumped into a van with four complete strangers, I knew I was embarking on an amazing journey that could likely change my life. But I certainly did not foresee the specific ways in which I would change. Back in August, being the oldest person on my team by about four years, I could almost speculate as to what changes each of my teammates would undergo during our year together. Things such as: growing in maturity, learning to put others before yourself, leaving the comforts of home, and dealing with the struggles of living 24 hours a day/7 days a week with complete strangers. At the start of our journey, I thought my teammates had a lot to learn. An 18 year old, two 20 year olds, and one 21 year old had a lot more to learn about life than me, right? After all, I am 25 years old, a teacher of two years, already established in my career, and have had a lot more life experiences than any of them possibly could. Oh, how wrong I was. Little did I know at that time early on in our journey together, that I too, had a lot of growing to do.

I’ll be perfectly honest in saying that one thing that has been a constant struggle for me for much of my life is being a member of a team. That word: team. Yikes. Team can be a rather scary word, at least for me. That word implies trust in someone other than yourself and being willing to compromise. It involves doing what is best for the whole instead of what you want or what is best for you. It includes a lot of listening and patience. It demands that you are flexible, understanding, and willing to give up control. For me, that last one can be rather difficult. I am a natural leader, just like my father, and I sometimes find it difficult to let someone else lead me. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my sisters, our friends, and I would play school. I could never let someone else be the teacher because they wouldn’t know how to make the schedule, copy the math worksheets, or plan the right amount of time for each class while still fitting in lunch and recess. Oh yes, I was serious about my organization and leadership abilities even then.

I am sad to admit that I often have a very hard time trusting in others to follow through. So, I stay up late, put in the extra hours I feel are necessary, and overcompensate for what I expect (that is another tricky word, being saved for another post) will be someone else’s shortcomings. More times that not, as a student I’d opt to work alone so that any grade I did receive was the grade that I earned through my own dedication and hard work. As a teacher, I’d often stay after school into the early (or late) evening to make sure that my students were getting the best teacher that they possibly could. I’d meet with students after school to help with homework, to simply chat or listen to bigger life and family issues, or to plan new and creative lessons that I felt my students deserved. That was even after my colleagues offered up their lesson plans for the same unit. Once again, I depended only on my own talents and preparation to pull me through. I am not saying that self sufficiency is a bad quality to have but sometimes only relying on yourself can cause you to burn out, fail, or never allow yourself to trust another person to do the job they have been called to do.

This year, I found that I have a lot of learning and growth to do in the area of teamwork. In August, not only was I just beginning to learn about the ministry of Youth Encounter and get to know my four teammates but, I was being thrown into a world where teamwork exists all day, every day. I had to learn to rely on four strangers. To trust them. To depend on them to do their designated jobs. To look out for them. To love them. And to work together with them as a team.

Early on in our year, I’d often find myself getting frustrated if something wasn’t completed when I wanted or what I expected or wanted to happen didn’t happen. Then I begin to think of what I would or could have done better or differently.

Let me start by saying, this is NOT the way to work on a team.

In the first few months on the road, I was in a constant internal (and at times, external) struggle with how our team functioned. Why didn’t we know what we were singing before we arrived somewhere? What was the schedule for the week? Was there actually a schedule and if there was why didn’t I know it? Why wasn’t anyone else working like I was during designated work times? How were we supposed to function when no one did their job right? Or cared? Or tried? Or worked as hard at their jobs as I did?

I know, I know, I sound like a total jerk. And I’m not proud of this. But it’s true. For a short while, I truly felt like I was the only one pulling our team together or putting effort into our team’s success. Instead of looking at what my teammates were doing; I focused on what they weren’t doing that I wanted them to. I focused on what I thought they should be doing instead of trusting that they were trained to do their jobs just as I was trained to do my jobs. In having these feelings what I communicated to my team was that they weren’t capable of doing their job. And that I could do it better than them. And that they should do their job how I would do it and not how they had decided/been trained. And this, my friends, is no way to be a team player.

I’ve always heard the phrase, “there is no I in team.” And often in my head, being oh so clever (or so I thought), I’d think to myself, “sure… but if you rearrange some letters there is a me.”

The truth is life is all about this very thing: coexisting with members of the teams that we become an integral part of. Since being born into this world we’ve been a part of various teams from families, to sports, friendship circles, youth groups, and jobs. In life, we constantly rely on others without even thinking and function (or fail to function) as members of a team. Some teams are easier to be a part of than others. Some require little work, while others require constant dedication. My family was my first team and the one team that I find easy to maintain. As a child, I trusted in my parents to raise my sisters and me. Not once did I question their job on our team. I knew what my roles were, my sisters knew their roles, and my parents had their roles. We function together as a team and allowed each other to do their job. We encouraged, trusted, and held each other accountable. We affirmed one another, showed love and grace, and at times, tore each other down. Most of the time, we functioned very well as a team. But other times, we did not. During these difficult times, we often gathered in our family’s three-season porch and all knew a little chat with lots of tears would likely take place But after this discussion, our team would function even better than it had the day before and help us learn and grow from the trust and love we felt for each other. All in all, my family is a very high functioning team. We have trust, love, understanding, and God at the center of our team. We listen to one another with open hearts and show patience and grace when necessary. We are willing to compromise and put the needs of our family above our individual needs. And often, we do this without a second thought because we care so deeply about the success of our team.

My Captive Free team is becoming a close second. Once I stopped being selfish and unwilling to trust in my teammates, I found that I saw all the wonderful ways that our team does and has functioned in wonderful ways since the very beginning of our time together. Once I allowed my teammates to do their jobs without questioning their experience or abilities and see all the wonderful things they brought to our team, I was able to feel that trust grow. I may still struggle some days with giving up full control but I am still a work in progress. I have learned a lot about teamwork and my roles on different teams. I’m learning how essential it is to trust in others and allow them to do the jobs they have been called to do. I’m striving to see the strengths of those around me instead of focusing on all that I wish they would do. I’m trying to keep myself accountable and learn to compromise. I’m doing my best to be a team player. And I’m quickly learning that there really is no I in team (and there is no room for me).