One Year.

What can you do in one year?

You can read the whole Bible.

You can learn another language.

You can have a baby.

You can lose a lot of weight.

You can learn a new skill.

You can change the world.

Or so they tell you. One year mission programs like mine advertise things like "A year of service for a lifetime of change" or "Blessed to be a blessing." We sign up for these service years to be just that: a 'blessing' to the people we are ministering. We make grandiose plans and lofty goals for what we want our year to look like and for the mission that we will be administering to these people in need. But what happens when these goals cannot be met? We throw ourselves into our jobs and into "frenzied action" as Parker Palmer would say, without truly thinking about ourselves and our needs and even our own actual capabilities because we only have ONE YEAR to change the whole world.

Somewhere along the way, we start to realize the reality of the situation. "Changing the world" might not look like what we originally thought. I would not say that we have 'failed' at our original goal, nor would I say that we are 'jaded' having been thrown into the darkest of situations. Instead, I would say we are educated. We have been handed a vital dose of reality and we have come out on top. We more fully understand that 'changing the world' doesn't necessarily mean making it like your own. Rather, it's the smaller things, like letting someone know they are loved, that truly changes the world. It's telling someone that you believe in them and then proving it by helping them get into college or helping them figure out a way to learn English. Changing the world in one year will not happen. I do not care how much energy or excitement you bring to the job. However, changing your way of thinking and allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to fail and then start over daily will change the world. Unfortunately, our tiny day to day actions might not make the impact that we had originally thought it would. However, a lifetime of these daily actions might bring forth a wave of change.