Tonight I just laid in my room in the darkness, crying.

I’m usually not outwardly emotional.  And my inner world is driven by my mind.  Seldom does something startle me to the point of flinching or being afraid.  Nothing ever makes me want to throw up.  I can never cry at movies, no matter how hard I try.  I can’t remember the last time I ate up butterflies.

What makes me passionate?  Well, Jesus makes me passionate.  Without Him, I could just care less about anything.  Including you.

What makes me passionate?

I wish I was more passionate.  I wish I could cry at movies or even real accounts of true events.  I wish unfair things that I hear about would make me sick enough not to want to eat.  Why don’t important issues even disrupt my life?

I watched a documentary today where a woman said that she once owned a clinic where she and her doctors botched an abortion.  The patient was a 12-year-old girl.  The procedure not only dismembered the baby, ripping her bones right out of their sockets before she could even scream, but the suction machine caught on the girl’s intestines and pulled her colon out through her own vagina.

The girl didn’t even sue.

What the hell is wrong with me that I didn’t even twitch?

What the hell is wrong with this girl that she didn’t stick up for herself?

What the hell is wrong with this abortion clinic that they coerce a girl into letting them violate her with tools and perform a murder inside her own body, make her pay for it, cover up the shit they did to her and her baby, and call it “choice?”

I didn’t know why I was crying tonight, but I think I figered it out.  I think I realized that there is some girl out there who has been told to forget, and yet she still feels empty every day.  There is some baby boy out there who has been forgotten, there is some man or woman being fed lies… and there needed to be somebody who wept about it.  There is nothing worse than a tragedy where nobody even cries.

That girl doesn’t know why she feels empty.  That boy will never know why he wasn’t allowed to live.  That man or woman doesn’t know why life is so confusing, and I don’t know why I’m crying.  But Jesus does.  I just want to tell that girl or that boy, “Jesus was listening, that night in your life, and He was watching.  He was there, and He was weeping for you.”  Because it’s true.

Probably my most common emotion is frustration.  I am an incredibly ambitious person.  Which is why I have a hard time functioning every day.  When I know I carry a message that is true — not just scientifically supported or emotionally charged, but really true — I’ll run the teeth off the gears in my head trying to think up how to make my voice loud enough to make the problems go away.  Could I ever give enough time or money or effort to make the problem go away?  Could I ever convince enough people to give up enough of their time or money or effort to do the same?

I don’t think I could.  I’m not big enough.  An entire movement isn’t big enough.  Changing the law won’t fix the problem.  Even if the message is true, it can’t save everybody.  Yeah, there are still slaves in this country.  There are still women being oppressed.  There are still men who don’t think they’re good enough.  There are still babies dying.

The problem isn’t society or “good people” versus “bad people.”  The problem is Evil.  It’s more powerful than I am.  It lives in all of us, and its best lie is to make us believe that we’re the good people.

I let Evil lie to my heart and take me captive and make me his whore.  I let him make me comfortable so I don’t even twitch at disembowelment and I don’t even sue.  I go around saying that we just need to love one another, and then I get an opportunity to love a roommate or a friend and I just let it slip by.  Don’t you?  I may not even recognize it.  It’s worse when I do, though.

I don’t live out what I say I believe.  I fail.  We hear “be the change you wish to see in the world,” and then we just go on listening to nice slogans and not changing a thing except reciting the same slogans that aren’t changing a thing.

And people still get raped.  And people still die.  And people still die inside.  We’ve just gotten used to it because we’re afraid that our voices aren’t loud enough.

Does that make you want to throw up?

No, me neither.  We’ve got our addictions to make us feel comfortable.  Clever, eh?  We hold onto our fears like teddy bears.

The problem isn’t necessarily that you or I have bad intentions.  We usually feel justified.  Everyone deserves a break, a weekend to get drunk off distractions, a night to just do what I want.  Even rapists and murderers, right?  Even me.  It’s not that we don’t know enough or that we’re not trying hard enough.  It’s that Evil’s voice is louder than my own voice in this world.  (i’m drowning) but it’s all gonna be alright

I’m not big enough to change even one single human heart.  That’s what frustrates me the most.  It’s my most common emotion because I’m in the business of changing hearts.  It’s a family business.

I guess that’s why my voice is loudest when I pray, even when I can’t even articulate what I’m praying.  When I humble my small self before God, he actually hears me and he drowns Evil and he hears me.  He is the God of Nations, and even his freaking whisper can blow away the world’s largest army (and it has).  He’s my Dad, and he cries a whole lot.

What makes me passionate?

A human heart transformed.