WARNING: You are now running on reserve empathy power. Please connect your heart to a power source.

In this past year alone, we have seen unprecedented tragedies from Haiti to Chile to Pakistan to Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast, and the Gulf of Mexico to Japan. I can’t handle it anymore. I don’t have any empathy left. I feel like a computer with its battery shutting down.

All of my talents and passions are worthless if there isn’t empathy in my heart. It is empathy that will give me the power to continue on. There appears to be no power outlet in sight to recharge my fatigued heart.

Read Andrew Thompson’s entire article about “empathy fatigue” in the Chicago Tribune.

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In my humble opinion, Compassion more than does its part to help children in poverty. Since I’m not part of their staff, I can say that! There are things like the letters I receive from my sponsored child and there are also the country spotlights. I’ve even received letters from pastors whose churches host the Compassion child development centers where my children are enrolled.

I was reading over some of the more recent posts on this blog and I got to thinking:

How do we get into — and stay — in our child’s world?

Compassion offers this blog, Facebook, Twitter and probably a dozen other social media outlets that I don’t know anything about. I’ve even visited a couple of kids in their home countries, met one of their parents, and met a development center director.

All of the pieces are available to help me connect with my child.

But sometimes … often … I still find myself very disconnected.

How do I stay in my child’s world?

I ask this question for a deeper reason. Sure, I want to be in tune with the lives of my sponsored kids so I can ask culture-appropriate questions in our letters and really build our sponsor-child relationship.

But more than that, I want to know how to pray for my kids. More than knowing how to pray, I want to feel a constant compulsion to have to pray for them.

In my head, I know my sponsored children need constant prayer. Let’s face it, all of us do. But unless I’m in their world, I’m ashamed to say that I don’t pray for them regularly. Or even consistently.

I don’t want to just be that supporting sponsor only when I get a reminder from Compassion. I want to be a sponsor who covers her kids in prayer all of the time.

So I’m asking you, our dear sponsors with a wealth of knowledge, experience, with some of the deepest hearts of anyone I have ever met —

How do you stay in your child’s world?

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Do you really?

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t care about the poor.

If I cared, I’d be more like Bono or Mother Teresa or even Wess Stafford — someone with influence and name recognition, someone with a story. If I cared, I’d do more, right? If I cared, I’d dedicate my life to serving the poor — as their champion, as their savior.

That may be a bit dramatic, but every day I battle a voice that constantly tells me I’m deficient as a person. The voice is aggravating, stupid, persistent, strong and above all, wrong. But despite the latter, fighting the voice is still the central focus of my waking hours. Ugh!

And despite what the voice is trying to convince me of, I do care. And I’m afraid.

I’m afraid of getting out of my comfort zone. I’m afraid of surrendering control. I’m afraid of what it might mean to have my behavior demonstrate that I care. What might that cost me?

Because I’m impatient, abrupt, often rude, condescending and even downright mean, the lie of poverty gains traction with me:

“If you cared, you’d be kinder. If you cared, you’d demonstrate love better. If you cared, you’d be more patient.”

And most days, I’m sad to say, this reasoning seems to make sense, which is baffling when I think about it because if I am patient, I’m just that … patient.

Attentiveness, patience, happiness, calmness, those are all behaviors and behavior is the fruit I bear — good or bad — but it is not who I am. And the absence of that fruit doesn’t mean I don’t care.

But what if the lie is actually the truth? What if I’m wrong and I don’t really care about the poor? Am I evil?

The Rev. Malcolm Duncan said, “When we fail to stand up for the poor, we fail to stand up for God,” and I believe that.

But the lie of poverty takes my belief and wraps it in guilt to convince me that I don’t really care about the poor, that I’m just doing what I think I’m supposed to be doing, that if I really cared I’d have more joy about it, and by extension I’m a bad person because I don’t have that.

On and on it goes. It’s sick really. The lie of poverty is sick!

Who cares about the poor? God does. Which is good for me because although my economic situation says I’m not poor, that’s a lie too.

And it’s good for you too because the lie I hear is the same lie I know you’ve heard a time or two,

“My sponsorship doesn’t make a difference.”

And it’s the same lie that your sponsored child fights every day,

“You don’t matter. No one cares about you.”

Who cares about the poor? Who cares about us?

God does.

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Although I’m not always a cynical contrarian, it is often my default viewpoint, and this can be a stumbling block for a social media marketer — cynical contrarians don’t tend to mesh well with marketing objectives. Maybe this is a good thing for you.

In my opinion, most marketing is about numbers. Getting more of something. And by that narrow, cynical definition the One Act video is pure marketing.

But, in my opinion the One Act video transcends the castor oil taste manipulative marketing often leaves me with. And I think that’s because the “one act” this video refers to happened to change my life. I am not a sponsored child, never was, but the act of sponsoring a child took me down a path I never would’ve imagined.

Five years ago I went to a free concert at a local church. At that time I was four months into my new life as a Christian sponge in the tub of Living Water. That night, the Holy Spirit dropped a baby into the tub with me.

In the middle of the concert, the musician stopped to share a story from a Compassion trip to Haiti. He talked about a woman who came up to him on the street and tried to give him her baby, to give her baby a better life. She was willing to give her baby to a stranger so the baby could escape the hopelessness of extreme poverty.

It was a moving and powerful story — much more so than these clipped sentences of mine suggest — and I wanted to quit my job and go work in Haiti. I wanted to immerse myself in doing Christ’s work, in serving others. I was anxious to learn if there was an opportunity for me to act on. And then the artist asked me to sponsor a child. Boring.

I was disappointed. I didn’t want to sponsor a child. I already sponsored a child with another organization and that was enough. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Sending more money wasn’t good enough for me.

For the rest of the show I dwelled on the missed opportunity to serve Christ in Haiti, but afterward, after the crush at the Compassion table dwindled, I asked someone if there was anyway I could go to Haiti because I didn’t want to “just” sponsor a child.

The person told me that Compassion organizes tours for sponsors to visit their children, which is something that the organization I was already sponsoring a child with, did not do. For whatever reason, the idea of visiting my sponsored child was enough to get me to act. I sponsored Lerionga.

And because of that one act, I went to Kenya 18 months later and met Lerionga.

Because of that one act, I heard about a job opening at Compassion while I was in Kenya. I got that job.

Because of that one act, I met my wife. She’s also a Compassion employee.

Because of that one act, I’m going to be a father. We’re expecting in September.

Because of that one act, I have hope that the darkness of my strain of emotional poverty ends with me.

Compassion International exists as a Christian child advocacy ministry that is releasing Chris, a child of Christ, from his spiritual and emotional poverty, enabling him to become responsible, fulfilled Christian adult.

When the darkness of emotional and spiritual poverty has swallowed you up, the devil has taken control. But in the middle of this desperation, a child can intervene. Act now, and sponsor a child. See what God does with you.

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I’m an introvert. I don’t like attention. But visitors to child development centers get lots of attention, and that means I’m experiencing a lot of discomfort and fear on this blog trip to Kenya.

My dislike for attention is connected to a fear of being “seen.” If I’m seen my “true self,” my inadequate self, might be recognized.

I embrace this lie of inadequacy often because I don’t recognize it as a lie; it feels like the truth, which I realize puts me in the same place as the children you sponsor … vulnerable to the lie of poverty.

No one told me I had “what it takes” when I grew up, or if they did, I didn’t get the message. And now, when people do tell me, “Good job!” I don’t believe it. This lie found fertile soil in my heart and now has deep roots.

The poverty in my life is emotional and spiritual. The poverty in the lives of the kids you sponsor and the kids we’re meeting here in Kenya is that and more.

I want you to sponsor a child, and I’m asking you to sponsor a child even at the risk of prostituting my emotions.

Prostituting my emotions, that’s my inadequacy talking. I feel I have to address any accusations or negative reactions about this in advance, in order to protect myself, and in order to somehow justify writing a post focused on me rather than on you.

My wife tells me you want to hear this stuff and that you want me to personalize this Kenya blog trip experience, but I don’t agree. I don’t think you want to hear about me; I’m not why you read this blog.

However, I am a newlywed, so I am trusting what I’ve often been told, that the wife is always right. So, this is what I’ve got for you.

I’m going to leave it to the other Compassion Bloggers to tell you about this boy we met today, to let you know about his situation and what makes him a highly vulnerable child in the midst of more than 300 other vulnerable children ministered to by Kabuku St. John Child Development Center. Hopefully they will do so.

For me, I can tell you with complete honesty that the only true emotion I have felt on this trip was when I met Samuel and learned that he is eight years old. He’s too small to be eight. He looks to be the size of a four-year old.

Samuel was enrolled in our Child Sponsorship Program three years ago. At the time he couldn’t walk, talk or even stand up on his own. His mother had abandoned hope of him living.

What I felt when the group I was with met Samuel (I was discreetly in the back of the group) had nothing to do with the successful intervention that Compassion helped make in his life.

I didn’t feel grateful or encouraged. I didn’t feel moved to pray for Him or to thank the Lord. I didn’t think, “He’s made it” or anything else that I imagine you may have felt or I should have felt.

In the midst of my ever present fear and the very vocal lie that was speaking at the moment, I felt his vulnerability and I respected him. I felt amazement and what I imagine to have been Jesus’ love for him.

Sadly, it only lasted a moment.

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I have a good job. I like it a lot. I don’t want to do anything else. My fellow webbies are great peeps. Lots of fun. And I love seeing and being a part of the conversations you have with one another. But amid all that I can still be a bit jaded at times.

Since this blog is a place of honesty and transparency, I have to admit that I have been known to say “Who cares?” to a tweet or two. Not any I send, of course.

I also admit to not putting much effort into managing “my personal brand” in those spaces, and that includes our newly launched OurCompassion.

However, on Wednesday, I learned what OurCompassion is really about.

I tend to feel emotionally disconnected a lot. It’s one of the themes in my writing. I’m not entirely devoid of emotion, but I do have to make an effort to connect. Jesus is constantly guiding me from my head to my heart.

So on Wednesday, as I’m enjoying the coincidental coolness of meeting Irene, via a story on our intranet, I received an e-mail notification from OurCompassion. Someone had written on my wall. I ignored it. I was “meeting” Irene.

The coolness I’m talking about is that Irene is part of the Shankoe Methodist Child Development Center. That’s where my boy, Lerionga, is. And that simple coincidence excited me.

I actually got a bit choked up. Only temporarily though because I’ve gots lots of importance stuff to do. Can’t afford the luxury of joy.

“The first thing Irene does before getting ready to go to the center is pray for the day’s activities: Compassion, her teachers, mother, the child development workers and her sponsor.”

The first thing I do in the morning is fight negativity. My neighbor wakes me up most weekdays at 5 a.m. with his idling Harley. I have to endure five minutes of mechanical hog grunting and snorting before he drives off.

“Just a few years ago, Irene’s family of six used to share a shelter with their livestock. Her mother watched helplessly as her children suffered from the cold. As poverty becomes unbearable, many parents consider marrying off their daughters to get some livestock for dowry.”

I gave a $300 family gift to Lerionga and he told me his family bought two cows and a goat.

“Irene’s new house is large enough for her entire family of three brothers, two sisters and their mother. The family gift Irene received from her sponsor helped them construct a new and spacious house roofed with iron sheets and filled with good chairs, tables and cushions inside.”

Yeah! Lerionga told me that his family built a new house with another family gift I gave. He lives with his mother, father, younger brother and younger sister.

Then, when I finally logged into OurCompassion I saw this, courtesy of my new friend, Jake Malloy:

“My family visited the Shankoe site in Dec. to visit Liaram. Here’s a video, maybe you’ll see Lerionga.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/jakemalloy/videos/10/“

This is the connection, the joined together thinking, we’re talking about. OurCompassion isn’t just a social network. It’s not about re-creating Facebook. Our Compassion is personal. It’s about bringing us closer to the children we sponsor.

I met Lerionga 2 1/2 years ago in Nairobi. He was one month shy of his 8th birthday. Since then he has asked me when I will come back. I don’t have an answer for him. But I do have lots of questions.

I want to know what his house looks like. I want to see the countryside where he lives. I want to know more about his center.

But like you, not all the questions I write in my letters get answered. Letters cross in the mail, take a long time to arrive, seem overly simplistic at times, suffer from poor translation, etc. I really only have my imagination, and some memories, to bridge the distance.

But not anymore!

Thanks to Irene, Jake and OurCompassion, my four-year sponsorship of Lerionga got a little more personal.

Even though I’ve seen many videos like the one Jake shared with me, and Lerionga wasn’t actually in this one, the fact that this video showed me places where Lerionga has been flooded me with emotion.

This time I got a bunch choked up, and my important stuff couldn’t do anything about it.

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American luxuries I once looked forward to now feel empty, as nothing fills the void that Africa left.

Someone once said, “Once you get the dust of Africa on your feet, it will never leave you.”

Every day further away from Rwanda, the more I ache to be there. It’s been six weeks since my return from Africa, yet some moments, I feel as if I just stepped off the plane and into this alternate reality called America.

What does a person do after experiencing poverty firsthand?

People were intrigued and interested for a short amount of time, but then the interest faded. And I’m left to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.

Leaving the kids I loved in Kigali, Rwanda, was like a death. It happens to most people who spend any amount of time away from home, and then return.

I cannot blame those around me who seemingly lose interest. The truth is, they have their own concerns, challenges, and broken hearts.

Life continued while I was away. It doesn’t mean people don’t care. It just means that new things sweep them up in the ever-flowing, ever-changing current of life.

So now I learn how to live post-Rwanda. I learn how to live with feet dirtied by the dust, heartache and beauty of poverty in Africa. Some days, my heart breaks and I lean harder on Jesus to help me through the sorrow. But I also want to use the sorrow to propel my heart to action.

God uncovered a deep passion in my heart for orphans in Rwanda who are hurting. Yet so many people in my own city hurt. So many in my own neighborhood are crying out for a Savior. It just looks different.

The U.S. is a stark reality when compared with the developing world. But for now, the Lord has me here in America, like most of you who are reading this. A dear friend of mine exhorted me: Don’t live in sadness.

Pray. Engage. Invest.

I need not be in Africa in order to shape Africa, to have a profound impact on a child in poverty. I simply need a heart that prays and longs for healing and blessing upon a continent too often overlooked.

I pray that each of us may turn the void in our hearts into an expanded place to love others at a level we have never yet experienced.

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We already know I’m an emotionally disconnected person, so help me out here.

Explain to me how you know that what you feel for your sponsored child is actually love.

Come on y’all. I want to know what love is. Sing it.

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And what I thought was powerful and moving at lunch barely compared to what I experienced on Friday. In fact, it didn’t compare at all.

As the kids took the stage, the lighting was almost dimmed by the luminosity of their smiles; they began singing, much like they did Monday at lunch, and despite the different setting, their energy and enthusiasm was unchanged.

The intensity of their voices and the authenticity of their faith, joy, and gratitude were unchanged. Impervious. And that wasn’t even the inspiring part.

The last song they performed was a ballad, a deeply captivating song about children in poverty. The words alone moved me to tears, but hearing it sung by children in poverty was almost unbearable.

The lyrics were written from an outsider’s perspective, but they were sung by those inside the circumstance. As the children sang, I pictured them securely resting in the arms of our Lord as He looked down on family and friends and asked the same question we all ask: Why?

The performance caused goose-bumps to erupt up and down my arms. As they sang the chorus one last time, instead of singing about “other children,” they sang about themselves. And in addition to thanking God for His love, they thanked us, the audience, for our support and provision.

As moving and inspiring as it all was, nothing compared with how it ended.

As they stood, singing, several girls started crying. Not just one glistening tear. They began to sob. Shoulders heaving and little bodies convulsing. It was like a domino effect.

I think I went into spiritual shock. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink. I could only absorb . . . and it was overwhelming.

I have always considered myself to be a somewhat mature Christian, having gone through my valley and mountain top spiritual seasons and coming out stronger and wiser for it. I thought I understood the grace and love of God. I thought I had some idea of the desperate dependence that the Lord calls us to live in daily, carrying our crosses and following His lead. I thought I had tasted His sovereignty and His provision. And for all of it, I have considered myself grateful and thankful for all those things.

But I discovered that my gratitude was about as deep as a kiddy pool compared to the spiritual depth and experience that I saw emerge from the hearts of those children.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that very few of us (if any) have ever been in a position in which meals were not guaranteed on a daily basis or our friend’s livelihood was not guaranteed when the sun came up. That a parent’s ability to provide was a prayer and not a promise. As much as I wanted to identify with these kids, I could not.

The reason we had nothing in common was because their gratitude poured forth from hearts that were grateful for spiritual life and the salvation of their souls.

They were grateful that they didn’t feel sick that day, that their families were being helped by Compassion. They were grateful because their sponsors loved them and cared enough to send $32 a month. They were grateful because gratitude was all they had to give.

How many of us want to be that grateful? Harder still, how many of us are willing to learn how to be that grateful?

If you want to know and have the gratitude that those children had, be prepared to understand why they have it. It is all that they have. The lives they lead are not radical; they are Biblical.

Where does your devotion lie?

Who or what holds the keys to your heart? Your joy? Your peace?

The only thing I truly know is this: when we have been brought to our knees at the foot of the cross, every hindrance aside, not only is our gratitude more pure and undefiled, but we are in the perfect place to receive His grace.

I want to rest there. Will you come with me?

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When I walked into the New Delhi Café (get it?), I was startled to see most of our tables occupied by little boys and girls . . . FROM AFRICA! A group of about ten kids, roughly eight to twelve years old, from Tanzania were all sitting down having lunch and drinking Cokes. They were bright-eyed, big smiled, beautiful kids.

As I filed in with many others for what we thought would be a normal lunch, I overheard someone say that they were all Compassion sponsored children.

“What an awesome reminder,” I thought to myself. “I’m working for them, their friends, and families.” Despite the fact that they were all well and healthy, I still found myself pitying them because they had to be “sponsored.”

But then, all of the sudden, they stood up, gathered together, started swaying in unison . . . and started singing.

I have never heard anything like it. Besides being on perfect key, they sang in harmony with one another. I can’t begin to tell you just how moving it was to listen to them to sing praises to the Lord. More powerful than their voices, though, were their hearts behind it.

As they sang and swayed, they all either had their eyes closed or their eyes wide open and hands raised to heaven. I never knew the power of a child’s faith until that moment.

And yet these are not just any children.

They are from parts of the world and circumstances that, from my perspective, would hardly move me to recognize and respond to God. The beauty and conviction for me lay in the fact their faith was not based upon their homeland or family circumstance.

Their faith and reason for worship was based on the condition and circumstance of their heart. I then realized it was not them who were in need or pity, but me.

While I appear healthy, I am actually quite diseased. I have the disease of greed, materialism, and — worst of all — selfishness. Things that have manifested themselves and festered not from need but overabundance. At some point, I don’t recall when, those thingsthat which were provisional blessings from the Lord stopped being blessings and became entitlements, in my mind.

As I sat listening to the kids singing “We worship you Lord, for you are good,” my heart broke. They sing those words because they know His goodness and faithfulness in another way: the provision they receive is unknown day to day, but still it comes.

Their gratitude stems from hearts that do not expect what they receive; rather, they are grateful because they know they can not provide for themselves, and so in the midst of their dependence, they are humbled. But they are not ashamed.

On the other side of the world lies another mindset completely.

In stark contrast, I find myself thinking and feeling as though I deserve all that I have. And the magnitude of my gratitude is dependent on how productive I am at work or how good my service was at the restaurant of my choice.

The bigger issue is the state of our hearts (I’m taking the liberty of speaking for all us, hope you don’t mind). Instead of rejoicing in our inability to provide for ourselves in the way that our souls need, we are afraid to be dependent on anyone, so we choose to be dependent on things. We are afraid to ask for help and receive assistance. In our culture, the only glory is in being self-sustaining.

Isn’t it ironic that even when we are successful in this, we still feel like failures?

As the kids continued singing, I found myself wishing I was more like them. Free from the world but enslaved to Christ.

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