Questions, Goals, and Causes... Basically my Current Thoughts...

[Katie Ullmann]

So the past week has been one of the most trying times in my life. Between my best friend getting ready to go halfway around the world, and everything I’ve been doing in my spare time I feel like the world is spinning out of control.

It started with the US Campaign for Burma National Organizational Meeting last weekend. Washington D.C. was a blast. I met a lot of really cool people who are using their gifts and talents to help people they may never meet. It was a little overwhelming, but phenomenal to be in a room with so many of the great people in the movement for Burma. I learned a lot of things about the importance of policy and our voice in this country. Aung San Suu Kyi herself said “Use your liberty to promote ours” and I really do think it’s important to do just that. I felt though as if I’ve done nothing to actually help people in Burma. Though I have taught and played with refugee children here after they are resettled I felt pretty worthless.

The next thing I attended was a presentation by Ishmael Beah. He is a former child soldier from Sierra Leone. He wrote “A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier” which is about his experiences during the war in Sierra Leone. Truthfully, it killed me. He talked about the rehumanization process. My heart aches for the refugee children everywhere. Though child soldiers have different issues, a lot of the kids I know I can’t say are rehumanized yet. I see them still trapped. There is no easy way to explain it, but they aren’t healed yet from their experiences. That hurts to see in such beautiful children. Some of the children occasionally slip out something they’ve seen and not only does it disgust me that humans could do that to another human, but it literally hurts my soul. I want to help them so much, but I really don’t know what that looks like.

So after feeling even more like I’ve done nothing with my life, the next night (Thursday night) I saw the live broadcast of “A Powerful Noise.” It’s an amazing documentary on three women in the world that are doing incredible things in their communities to empower other women and positivitely changing many lives. Though they don’t have much they just give and give and give. The Vietnamese woman is helping to change the stigma surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic in her community. The amazing thing about her is that her daughter and her husband died of AIDS and she is infected with the virus as well. I can’t imagine the strength that would take. The woman in Mali was one of the first women to go to school. Her father sent her to school and now spends her life trying to get the villages to send their children (in particular girls) to school. The girls that aren’t as fortunate a lot of times come to the city to try and make enough money for their dowry. This woman spends her time organizing 11 campuses of a school that teaches them to read and write in their native tongue. Also, they are taught skills and defended when their employers treat them poorly. The last woman is from Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is uniting the Bosniaks and Serbs and creating peace between the ethnic groups. Her way of doing this is helping women come together and discussing their needs together. She is trying to make a co-op for women in this area. This way it gives the women a place to work and to put their products. I was amazed by these three women and the panel that followed the documentary was incredible as well.

Then yesterday (Friday) I attended an International Women’s Day celebration! It was amazing. Mama Rachel talked to us about her experiences. The one thing she stressed was that she has been blessed and gifted by God and because of all that people have done for her she thanks God and wants to help other people because she is overflowing with blessings and gifts. This woman is from Southern Sudan. Her father was a gardener for a missionary so sent her to the missionary school which was unheard of in the 50s. Sending a girl to school was VERY unusual. As Mama Rachel got older she and some of the other women in her community stood up for women’s rights and started to stress the importance of equality and that women are NOT slaves. They are humans that deserve respect. It was amazing to hear her talk.

After all of this I remembered the question that was posed to us at community night. Derrick challenged us by asking how could we live more simply. The first thing that popped into my mind was money. I spend a lot of money on things I use but don’t necessarily need. I give money to people to use that don’t necessarily need what they are buying. My money is not used effectively and it definitely is not helping bring change to the world. I’ve thought about how to make that different but I’m not sure.

The next place my mind went was about making my life simpler in my mind. I think one of the answers might be that I need to step down from some of the humanitarian/political advocacy stuff to figure out where to focus my efforts. If you can’t tell I’ve been learning about people from ALL over the world in the past week. Like I don't know if I could even get to all the places in a week and actually do a single thing to help even one person on this earth. I know more statistics on other countries than I do the United States. I’m able to ramble off horrific stories about mass murders, poverty, injustice, and policy changes that are needed, but what has anyone gained from my knowledge? What human being has been helped through my knowledge? I need to be able to focus. I need to be careful to not spread myself too thin which currently I’m doing in my mind. I currently work with refugees from Sudan and Burundi. I’ve been blessed and gifted to serve them and help them. My heart is tugging me to Burma and to women/girls all over the world, BUT that is not where I need to be now. Though knowledge is important it is a burden and really hard for me to function and not want to change the world for those people once I know information about them. I really want to help women and girls though.

Though this might have already been briefly addressed in the information above because my heart is all over the place my emotions are as well. This makes it hard to get simple things done without being over emotional and blowing things way out of proportion and hurting the people I love. I don’t want to be as emotionally haywire as I am currently because I no longer have the motivation I need to do anything. My emotions not being focused cause me to lose my passion for everything. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to discipline my emotions, but at the same time I do see my emotions as a gift. I can feel people’s pain and joy at a greater level and intensity because of how emotionally I am. Though to some this might seem like a bad thing it gives me insight to more than one side of an issue and allow myself to feel for the other side as well.

I am not able to serve anyone well at the current moment. The last time I was able to help someone effectively is when I was more focus and I had a goal in mind. Currently I have too many things in my hands to do any one thing well. If you are trying to paint a masterpiece you hold onto a single paint brush, not a pencil, a pen, a paint brush, a pastel, and a spoon. Because of this I really think I need to find my one paintbrush. I need one goal. It’s not that you can’t use many colors to achieve the one goal, but you need one goal. Now this goal though can be broad like women/girls or really specific and be the educational efforts on the Burma/Thai border. I just need to have one. I need to live simpler financially and emotionally so I can use those gifts towards whichever goal I pick. I also need to get to a point where I’m willing to consider giving up certain things so my time can be used more effectively for my one goal. And I guess I’m reluctant to call it a cause. I’m worried that if I call it a cause then it isn’t focused enough. I need a goal within a cause.

So I'm looking forward to figuring out how to live simpler and what that looks like. In order to help people I think the answer lies with living simpler and focusing on one thing.

Holy Spirit give us ears to hear the questions.