I'm getting really tired of being mediocre. I'm tired of settling for the status quo. I'm the one to blame. I'm the one who isn't running after God full force. I'm the one that's being distracted and lazy. I'm the one who is letting my fear rule my life.

I want to take this world by storm. I want wherever I am to be electric. I want the presence of God to be insane around me - whether I'm in Kenya or South Florida.

Mediocre. This is not where we are meant to live. Mediocre. It's a prison. Mediocre. We're missing out.

I want to break free.

I still wonder what to do. Over half a year later, and I still don't have it figured out. I think of children - their smiles lighting up my heart, chasing away the sadness and the selfishness. I think of woman laughing and at time crying out with anguish to their God. I think of a hopeless woman telling us her story and telling us she would have committed suicide by now if it was not for her young son. I think of woman dying of AIDS. I think of children dying of AIDS. I think of many widows who have watched their husbands die of AIDS now watching their children die of AIDS. Maybe for you, this makes you sad, but you don't know these people. You will go on with your day and perhaps even forget you read this. This isn't an abstract situation for me. These people have faces, they have voices, they have names. It is my adopted family who are struggling to recover from a terrible drought. It is my church family and my group of orphans who lost some of their number because of lack of food. Lack of food! They have things like AIDS and malaria to deal with, but that's not what killed them - lack of food. Something so preventable. Something we could have changed.

What is my responsibility? That is where my wondering what to do comes in. Someone told me yesterday that I can't fix Africa. I want to! I don't want another child to go hungry. I don't want another person infected with AIDS. I don't want another refugee to be stuck inside a refugee camp with no hope of a future in the next ten years. I want to make a difference. At the very least I want to bring hope. I want to send money, but that doesn't feel like I'm doing enough. I want to go over there, but who knows when that will work out with needing time off of my newly acquired job (not to mention saving up the required money). What will I do once I get there? How can I make a difference? What is my responsibility?

This never-ending question, this never-ending ache for the people of Kenya makes every situation that comes along in my life that much harder. As if I needed any situation in my life to be any harder. I feel overwhelmed by fear. Not a single thing in my future looks bright and beautiful - only scary and impossible. I feel like my life is lacking purpose. I float from one thing to next looking for meaning and when my search ends up fruitless, I feel despair. No one really understands. No one ever really has. I think I'm destined to go through life never truly understood. Sometimes it really bothers me. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm not sure where I fall along the spectrum right now.

Change has always been something I've striven for since I was a young teenager. I wanted to be in college. I wanted independence. I wanted to be in a relationship. Now I'm realizing that change isn't all it's cracked up to be - I guess I've actually known that for quite awhile now, though. I'm just being reminded of the fact as I say goodbye to friends and family for another extended amount of time. I dread the thought that this could possibly be the last week that my whole family co-exists under the same roof. After my brother graduates from college, who knows where he will end up? I've picked my little plot of land to live on and no longer will do the moving around that my family does. Everything changes. I always long for change, but then I dread it when it's directly before me. I need to hold tight to Jesus - the only One who isn't going to change.