Why are you here?

I have officially just finished all my pre-arrival assignments for being a Roadie. IC created a blog with a series of activities and questions to do and answer respectively before we arrived in San Diego. Here I am, one week from that date, and I have finished them all.

To be truthful, however, I had them all done a long time ago. There was only one question that kept tripping me up and that is the same one I have titled this post: Why are you here?

I was told to keep it to a maximum of 200 words. Already the alarm bells were ringing in my head. 200 words? I have been around for 4 years and have seen and done more with this organization than some of my teammates and I'm sure even they can't contain their explanation to 200 words!

I've been writing and rewriting that response for weeks now but to no avail. Nothing I've come up with has been anything less than 400 words and most of them are much more than that.

I got onto that blog this morning and decided to throw aside everything else I'd written and to just put words on virtual paper--see what came out. Here it is, one word shy of my limit, in all its glory:

There's a great big world out there. It's a beautiful world filled with the laughter of children and the spray of water crashing on rocks and creatures yet undiscovered stalking through the underbrush of some long-forgotten rainforest. It's a sad world filled with the uncomforted tears of mothers and the hatred of brothers and the accidents of those who throw caution to the wind. It's an exciting world filled with wonder and adventure and incredible impossibilities. I love that world.

I am here to learn--to see the majesty of that world wherever I am, to hear the words and the stories of the people who walk it, to recognize the similarities between us.

I am here to face a challenge--a personal challenge to keep fighting, a greater challenge to promote change, even greater to inspire.

I am here because I was changed and challenged years ago. I was shown a beautiful world so different from my own and invited to be a part of it. I am here to join that world making it a part of who I am and to share it with everyone I meet.

I am here to love and to hopefully bring peace.