By Christine, CBF field personnel

“God’s ways are not our ways.” We say things like that and we think we believe it, until we’re actually faced with a situation where the path in front of us is not the one we were trying to choose. Perhaps this is the right thing that God is calling us to do; leading us into unexpected places. After all, isn’t that how God often works, leading us into a deeper richness than we could have created on our own. 

While I’ve long felt called to work with the women and children who’ve been most impacted by the effects of trauma and the violence of war, many of whom have little access to the healing care they need to overcome the horrors they’ve experienced, I’m also aware of the profound impact the brokenness of life can have on the helpers.  

As a social worker and minister, I constantly encounter people who got into this line of work to help, to love and serve the world, but who quickly realize they can’t imagine how they’re going to carry the toll of all they’re seeing and hearing daily. How will they carry the stories, the traumas, the injustice of all they bear witness to, especially when the needs are wholly overwhelming and the resources available seem utterly inadequate.

One of the most beautiful, unexpected gifts of this journey has been the opportunity to care for those who spend their days caring for others. These last years have provided opportunities to offer care to the helpers – social workers, counselors and chaplains, nonprofit leaders, humanitarian workers, community caregivers, many of them refugees or migrants themselves, deacons and lay leaders jumping into action after earthquakes shook their communities.

I know what it’s like to be the helper needing help, most of us do if we’re honest, and I’m drawn back to Henri Nouwen’s writings on the idea of the “wounded healer.” I suspect perhaps God is weaving my story together in ways I would have never imagined. And I wonder how often we all miss opportunities to use our own stories of heartache and hardship to offer a seed of hope to others, to offer water in a dry and weary land because we too know what it’s like to walk in the desert. We too have felt despair. We also know, the desert doesn’t last forever, and as Bono reminds us, “we get to carry each other.” What a gift.