A piece of my heart

Where ever you go you leave a small piece of you behind. A piece you rarely notice and usually doesn’t affect your life in the new places, but then tragedy strikes and that piece of your heart breaks with the hurting and frightened in the place that used to be home.

That is my heart right now. Sichuan was my home for a year. Chengdu was a place I could wander around fairly easily and often find a friend. And now it’s an area trembling and fearful. My students and colleagues are safe, but some have family they still can’t contact. And my heart and mind are more divided than before. Now it’s not just between Yangzhou and America, but also Chengdu. Could I help? Could I be there for my former students and friends?

Most people keep telling me they are so happy I’m not in Chengdu this year, but I’m less happy about it. I feel so bad for those there. I recognize some of the places in the pictures I see on the news, I talk to students who are huddled outside in the rain too scared to go inside. Questions about their future, questions about their families, questions about classes (is the damaged building safe?). And my heart hurts. I cry for them. I lift them up. And I want to be there with them.

But I can’t. I am in Yangzhou right now as designed by the Father and this is where I need to be. Students here are nervous about the tragedy and filled with questions. I have a student from a province next to Sichuan and she’s obviously distracted as well. There is a work to be done here just as there is a work in Chengdu and the rest of Sichuan, and for reasons I don’t have to understand, this is where I am to work for the next 46 days.

Now I just need to keep my head here instead of Sichuan or America… blah.