Remembering The Joy

Maybe it’s because I’m writing this post late at night.  Or that some of our board members are struggling through post-COVID fog, recent injuries, and family issues.  But more than likely, the fear factor that creeps into our beings as we prepare for our Finding Freedom Through Friendship international trips is warranted.  Our board members have collectively made over 100 trips to Guatemala and Egypt for many years; they are a necessary part of our nonprofit oversight.  The experiences, both negative and positive, build in our psyche and revisit us in our most vulnerable moments.

We are a hands-on organization. 

We have traveled on roads that did not deserve the name, eaten questionable food, and dealt with water contamination, insect-filled hotels, and inhospitable weather conditions.  Our board members/volunteers have visited hundreds of FFF participant’s homes, heard their concerns, shared their emotions, and felt their distress.  As we tour our learning centers, orchestrate FFF health events and interview our students we learn first-hand what challenges FFF participants deal with daily. We are a hands-on organization.  In other words, we walk with the women and children we serve.  While FFF board members have learned the boundaries that keep us emotionally healthy and able to continue giving, our remembrances of these events live deep within us.  It has to be so.  Without that emotional vulnerability, our humanitarian hearts would wither.

There are emotional and physical risks from these experiences that both have to be ignored and learned from.  Become too soft-hearted, and we can be taken advantage of.  Weary hearts can grow cold.  Where’s the fine line?  How do we negotiate the fine lines between our ability to perceive yet still receive; to assist without enabling; to offer a hand up, not a handout.  These finely tuned skills are hard-won and essential when sitting in the reality of grueling generational poverty.

We come home from our international trips emotionally and physically exhausted but also exhilarated at the positive changes FFF has brought to our participants.  The near misses on risky road trips and bouts of tummy trouble are forgotten.  We return home refreshed from immersion in the relationships we have forged over years of working with the FFF staff and participants who deeply inspire us. The joys (and there are many) bubble to the surface when allowed.  Walking with our participants as they become the women and mothers they are meant to be is a joyful experience.  When emotional vulnerability bubbles to the surface late at night, this needs to be remembered.