Heart Sleeve: Names that break my heart

Amy, George, Taylor, Rebecca, Dakota, Calyx, and Beau.

Those are the names that have broken my heart this week.

Amy was a stay at home mother, married to a man who seems to care about her deeply, who was shot by her husband's cousin. George, Taylor, Rebecca, and Dakota are four teens (out of 2 million) homeless, and these 4 in particular, don't seem to have much choice in it. And Calyx and Beau are two more teens, shot by their mother for mouthing off.

It's one of those weeks where I clutch my chest and think- what is happening? why is this happening? don't they get it? how do they not see?

When I feel this way, I wonder what God’s heart feels like. I wonder what it’s like to know the intricacies of each broken heart times the population of the world from its beginning. I wonder how many layers of hurt there are. The ripples in the river of hurt originating in the individuals, rippling out to the hearts of those that loved them, and all the way out to hearts like mine, that simply hurt because their hearts hurt. That’s a lot of hurt. It baffles me how God is able to hold all that hurt and all the questions and anger that comes with them.

I don’t think these things happen on purpose to push these individuals toward action or toward God. I don’t think God is into manipulation to gain relationship and love.

I don’t think that there’s some vicious demonic force running around either (that causes these, though I won't deny there are dark forces out there).

I do think most of these hurts are caused by bad human relationships. At least, that’s the case with these stories.

This makes me want to work harder at making sure my spouse, my children, my family, and my friends know that they are loved unconditionally by me. That I support them in what they need to do in order to become stronger in their relationships with God and those around them. It makes me want to be the me that God created me to be. But it also makes me stop and take a cold, hard look at the evil I do every day. The ways I disconnect, the ways I injure, the ways I make those I love feel ‘less than’.

I pray my actions, or inactions, never lead to anything so awful, and I pray that as my children grow they will see how far their actions reach, so that they will keep from harming others, too.

I pray we all take the reminders of Amy, George, Taylor, Rebecca, Dakota, Calyx, and Beau, to make the needed changes in our own lives, so that stories like theirs become nonexistent.


a link to the 20/20 episode on the 4 homeless youth.