The Power of Love

Edit: I am posting this now because apparently I hit save draft instead of publish post last night—whoops!

Today was an interesting day to say the least. I had a lot of work to do for nursing school which I was totally not able to even get halfway done… and then I had a conference to go to for church. I was thinking throughout the day a million different thoughts about life and my abilities and shortcomings and it was a pretty all-over-the-place kinda day for me emotionally. Three of my classes require that we work in groups for different group projects. There are about 41-42 people in my class, depending on which it is, so we are supposed to be in groups of 6-7. Well pretty much everyone got into groups already and totally discluded myself and another student. Since there are only two of us, we can’t start our own group. We asked the class about 3 times if anyone would please let us join their group… to no avail. Not even a single response back. This left me feeling just really terrible about myself. I feel like that would be pretty normal for anyone in my situation. 39 people and no one volunteers to let you in their group? They clearly have room for us both or else the numbers wouldn’t work out—but I guess that’s just how people are sometimes… especially when they are as clique-y as they are in my program. So after this development, I was having a kind of sad day. I was wondering if all of my intentional acts of caring or if any of the sacrifices of time, money, or otherwise that I have made for people (including people in this program) really even mattered at all. Then, I went to my conference.

It was on The Power of Image—a look at photography and its messages from a Christian perspective. We had some super famous photographer give us a speech and it was all well and good—but then he said something that really stuck to my heart. He was talking about how he organized this event with prostitutes and strippers where a make-up/hair team would give them a nice make-over, he would shoot their pictures, and then some photoshoppers would work on them to make them look like the quality seen in magazines. Then they would print and frame the pictures and give it to them. The idea behind it was to let them see who they were behind their career choice… it kind of would take a while to explain… but anyways basically he spent hours doing this event and the women photographed didn’t really seem to have a response. He went home later that night and talked to his wife about how he didn’t think that they really reached anyone and how it didn’t seem like anyone really cared about the experience. He was dejected.
Then over the next week weeks, he started to get calls from different people who knew the girls. Apparently some of them hung their pictures on their lockers at work to remind them of the women that they once were and could be again. One woman cancelled all her sex-appointments that day and went to the movies with her sister, which she hadn’t done in a long time, and said that for the first time she actually felt normal and human. Another took the picture home and showed it to her child and said that the way that the child looked at her made her decide to end her 20-year life of prostitution that night. Wow! Praise!

What I learned from that talk was that we all have moments of doubt about whether or not we are really making a difference. Circumstances come up that shake our foundations and make us question whether what we are sacrificing to achieve is even worth it. The thing is—we rarely ever know the true impact that our actions have on other people. If the photographer never received the call from the outreacher worker, he could have gone through his whole life never knowing what a difference he—and his team—made in the lives of those women. I just found that to be really inspiring amid my crummy day of self-reflection. I left the conference feeling renewed with my mission and everything I was doing.

When I got home, I logged onto Facebook to see if anyone had posted in my nursing group that I could join their group. Unfortunately, no one did. But what did happen made me smile even brighter. I logged on and saw a notification—Chuck McKeever has tagged you in a comment. I clicked on it and his status read “I have received massive amounts of karma lately, from strangers, co-workers, and friends alike. In an effort to repay my massive debt to the universe, the first three people to comment/message me can name a book from their reading list and I'll mail them a copy. Provided it's not a first edition Shakespeare folio or something, it will be yours free of charge. Doesn't matter if we haven't spoken since high school, met once in college, or I've known you my whole life. Get at me.” Then underneath that “ Ps Brittany Klocko your birthday thing was part of the idea behind this, so feel free to name one too!”

Success.

That’s all I needed. In that moment I realized—what I am working so hard to achieve… it’s working. If only one person’s life is better because of what I am doing, then doesn’t that make it more than worth it? I would have to say that it does.

Success.