Today I met a lady from Delaware. She told me so very proudly. She was a most fascinating little creature…one of those ladies who shamelessly wear Hawaiian-printed button-up shirts with mismatched socks and clashing shorts.

She caught my attention as I was walking briskly into Goodwill to drop off some of the clothing articles I’d purged from my closet last week.

“Ma’am…do you know where the closest Salvation Army is?” she asked, smiling a bright, perky, expectant-sort of smile.

I explained to her that I was a student, and that I wasn’t originally from the area either, but pointed her in the direction of some other thrift stores that I knew of, and turned her over to the helpful, happy Goodwill employees who gave her step-by-step directions to here, there, and everywhere else.

She thanked me profusely (I think she forgot that she got more help from the Goodwill ladies than she did from me), and gushed to me that she “just LOVES!” thrift shopping. (She must have been telling the truth, because dude, who drives from Delaware to hit up Goodwill and Salvation Army?!).

I nodded, and smiled, and told her that I hoped very much that she would enjoy herself at Salvation Army as much as she apparently had at Goodwill.

As we were walking across the parking lot towards our respective vehicles, she suddenly stopped short and said with some forcefulness,

“Good luck in school, too, honey! That’s right. You just keep studying. You don’t need to be dependent on some man. You can make it all by yourself!” She was jabbing one stubby forefinger emphatically in my direction as she smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

I was somewhat perplexed by her comment, and the way in which she said it, so I simply nodded, smiled, waved, and got into my car.

But then I had to wonder…is that really what people think? If I, as a woman, choose to pursue higher education, does that automatically mean I’m doing it because I’m a feminist who wants to be able to live my life without being “dependent” on a member of the opposite sex, or—horrors!—burdened with runny-nosed, noisy little kids who might potentially get in the way of me doing exactly as I please for as many days as God please to give me?

But then I thought a little further, and realized that probably, beneath that dazzling Hawaiian shirt, beats the heart of a woman who’s been deeply hurt by failed relationships…the heart of a woman who projects her own failure and pain onto those she meets. And suddenly, I could feel only compassion for the eccentric little prophetess as I thought about what her life might have been…and as I realized that perhaps she awakes each morning to find herself yet again in a world of shattered dreams and broken promises.

So am I studying nursing because I’m hoping to live a completely independent life, “making it” all by myself? To be honest, that sounds like a dreadfully depressing existence to me. As humans, we were created to live in relational community, regardless of our marital status, career track, or dietary preferences, and I can’t imagine trying to flounder through life without the network of godly mentors, peers, and family members that God has blessed me with.

But the Hawaiian-shirted prophetess was alluding to something deeper. She was unwittingly highlighting the fact that here in America, we place a ridiculous amount of importance on self-sufficiency and independence. Why is it that we attach such a negative stigma to the concept of being “dependent” upon someone else, or to having someone else be “dependent” upon us? We see dependency as a weakness…an admission of inadequacy and ineptitude.

What we perhaps fail to understand is that our willingness to lean on others—to be “dependent”—when done in the proper way, is actually a manifestation of strength. With each passing year, I have come to realize a little more fully that it takes a much greater strength of character to live in community, to maintain closeness, and to be intentionally dependent upon each other than it does to lead a life of freakish independence, coming and going as we please without regard for the feelings, schedules, or priorities of others.

I hope that the men and women of my generation will become more dependent as we mature...first that we’ll have the wisdom to depend heavily on God, and secondly, that we’ll develop the character to depend on—and be dependable for—each other.

And some day? I hope we have the maturity to see that there’s no better legacy to leave than to raise a passel of runny-nosed, noisy little kids (who will inevitably get in the way of us doing exactly as we please for the rest of our lives)…to nurture them and guide them and disciple them and plant a vision in their little minds…to do our very best and to hold nothing back in order to instill in the generation to come an uncompromising character and unstoppable determination.

Laughter is a gift. I'll be the first to confess that I love all that is light-hearted, funny, innocent, comical, and endearingly sweet. But sometimes, I'm confronted with things at which I cannot laugh. Sometimes, when I look at life, the reality of who and what we, as humans, are...is enough to make me want to put my head in my hands and just cry.

It is impossible to spend any great length of time on earth without recognizing that humanity, even at his most exalted and in his finest form, is sick—emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically twisted, deformed, and warped on a fundamental and intrinsic level. In each of us, much of what was once the divine spark has been obliterated, stained, darkened…ruined. Man as he once was—flawless, beautiful, fearless, and perfect—has been transmuted into something which is insidiously sinister, grotesque…even horrific.

And because man is not what he once was, the world is now what it is. Each one of us is part of an international community in which there are literally millions of people affected by pressing issues…men, women, and children who are begging for our attention, pleading for solutions, praying that someone, somewhere, someday will have the decency and the humanness to merely care.

This past week I had the opportunity to preview a film made by a couple of young people who had the decency and the humanness to care about what is perhaps one of the more pressing and increasingly pervasive poisons in American society. It was a film called “Sex + Money: a global search for human worth"…and it dealt with the issue of sex slavery in America.

It was challenging—and horrifying—for its honesty. I left feeling like someone had punched me in the gut…it was that sick, panicked, stunned sensation you get when you hit the ground after free-falling 20 feet.

Why? Because there was a lot that I didn’t know. I didn’t know that literally tens of thousands of middle school and high school girls are recruited or kidnapped annually and forced into prostitution all over the United States. I didn’t know that only one in three of those girls forced into prostitution at 13 or 14 years of age have parents who actually care enough to even report them missing. I didn’t know that the average clients—those who devalue, destroy, humiliate, and abuse these young prostitutes by using them instead of rescuing them—are married men…middle-aged citizens with children—perhaps with teenage daughters around the ages of the girls they’re using and then throwing away. Men with average marriages, average families, average jobs, who go to average churches, and lead average Christian lives. Average pastors. Average deacons. Average businessmen. Who go home to their families at night with a smile pasted on their faces as though man were not the product of his thoughts, his actions, and his values…as though the largeness of one’s pretense could make up for the smallness of his character.

Another thing that came out was that there is a frightening amount of evidence indicating that pornography addiction is the single biggest commonality shared by those who perpetuate the sex slave trade by serving in the role of client. Perhaps we, the American people, should do more than lip service to the reality of the fact that where we allow our minds to go is where our bodies will later follow.

The kids who put together the movie had learned and grown much through the process, and you could see in their eyes that the dark reality of what they had learned in the course of putting the documentary together had changed them. There was no going back to what they had been.

One of the distinct realities of life is that when we are exposed to something which appalls us by the very tragedy of its existence—when we gaze with anguished fear into the black horror of some monstrous atrocity—we are faced at that moment with a decision. We can choose to turn our back, and walk away, and let our actions speak to the fact that we simply refuse to care…or we can choose to feel every ounce of the pain, to let our minds and our hearts be revulsed by what we nonetheless choose to embrace, to feel the full weight of the despair and the hopelessness and the brokenness—to understand that to act will also require that we be encompassed by the blackness and scarred by the monstrosity of the battle in which we are called to engage—to know all of this, and yet choose to move forward with determination and purpose, knowing that it is better to die fighting than to die without ever having entered the fight…we can do either of those things. But we can never again say that we were unaware…that we didn’t know. We may no longer hide behind the protective veil of ignorance, because in the moment of truth, the luxury of innocence is forever ripped away.

You could see in the eyes of each person there that night that the luxury of innocence had been ripped away. And you could see in the tears coursing down the faces of many of us that were there that night that the issues of sexual abuse, pornography addiction, and the resulting devaluation of human worth are all issues which strike very close to home. Statistically, one out of every four people in that room had been sexually abused, raped, or molested at some point in his or her lifetime. From the uncontrolled sobbing that was elicited from some who were there in response to the film, I’d say the statistics are about right.

It’s incredible to me—in the most ghastly sense of that word—that humanity can be so noble at times, and yet capable of perpetrating the most heinous acts of compassionless destruction. To choose deliberately to degrade someone sexually…to use them and then casually throw them away…is one of the greatest horrors one person can perpetrate against another. To reduce man, made in the image of God, to a mere object to be abused, mutilated, and destroyed—both personally, emotionally, physically, and psychologically—is appalling for the fact that it is done openly, shamelessly, and remorselessly on a daily basis. We live in a world where human souls by the millions are tortured and sacrificed upon an altar erected to the god of human pleasure. And the question we’re left to face is whether we care enough to lift a finger—whether we’re willing to take part in a war that might cost us everything…whether we can live with the shame of choosing to turn our backs and do nothing.

Woohoo! God is so gracious! It’s the beginning of yet another school year. Which means I’ve survived yet another 12 months of…life. Awesome.

I’m excited to be progressing, and slowly working towards a theoretical graduation date. But I also find myself wrestling with a rather massive case of senioritis—or maybe it’s I-just-want-to-be-done-itis. And it’s only the second week of school. Oh dear. This might be a very long year.

But it’s going to be a good one, because life is awesome in so many ways!

It’s amusing to be back on the college campus again…you start to notice patterns. Every year, there are crowds of eager freshman, just out of highschool, who are quite positive that they will find the perfect woman or the perfect man within the first 24 hours of being on campus. And if not within the first 24, well, surely within the first week. After all, the odds are truly in their favor, right?

Note: It IS true that the odds are in their favor. Experience shows that it is indeed the odd ones who are the most intent on showering favor, love-smitten glances, and marriage proposals upon anything that resembles a specimen of the opposite gender…especially if they’ve been acquainted for more than 24 hours. Oh. My. Word. That’s like, um, an ETERNITY to know someone. And if you don’t propose to her NOW, well, then, gracious, the next guy’s sure to snatch her out from beneath your very nose!

Seriously? Chill, guys. Relax. Take a deep breath. Maybe take some sedatives. Whatever it takes. But just give yourselves like…three years…to kind of get the hang of things, get to know her, yeah, you get the picture. And then think about maybe…asking her to coffee. No proposals on the first date. Bad idea. I promise.

And the sophomores, juniors, and seniors…well, the closer you get to the finish line, I think the more you begin to feel like you’ve got ants in your pants…and as you pore over your textbooks, you secretly are earnestly longing for the day when you will sell every last textbook to some naïve freshman and move on to the next phase of life. Maybe not. But I secretly feel that way sometimes. Especially when I read Pharmacology textbooks.

But I have to say that studying nursing has been an extraordinary opportunity. It changes your view of people—and your understanding of God. It’s crazy, in an awesome kind of way, to catch a glimpse of the intricacy of the systems which make up the human body as you study human anatomy…or to marvel at the miracle of new life as you hold a slippery, wriggling newborn in your hands in the delivery room…or to feel how deeply God’s compassion towards us must be as you stand beside the distraught family members of a patient who may not live through the night. These moments—these memories—are gifts. And the longer I live, the more I feel that this is so. And I’m grateful.

But right now…I’ve gotta go read Pharmacology. And as I do, I shall think about selling my textbooks to a freshman—and giving her a smile, and a hug, and telling her with a wink that I wish her all the best. And then…just because I’d feel mean if I didn’t…I’d give her my phone number and tell her to call me when she had questions…or just needed a hug. ;-)