Our Land – Fixer

Hi friends!  If you haven’t been following the Our Land series, you’re missing out (in my humble opinion).  It came about because so many of you responded with love and enthusiasm to The Land of Empathy and Wonder.  I very much appreciate your support for each amazing contribution in this new series.  Although they make the rest of my stuff look bad, I have been blessed with amazing authors who allow me to share their work here.

One of those authors, my friend Kerry, is back today.

To refresh your memory, she’s the amazing 19-year old college freshman (soon to be a sophomore as she just finished her final exams – WHOOOP Kerry!) whose writing continually blows me away. She’s going to be famous and you should get to know her now – while you can still say that you “knew her when.”

Kerry provides a fresh, young, brilliant voice.  She manages to create and see Our Land in so many situations and people.  I’m sure you remember her.  She’s

the first person I considered when making this a series.  She kindly authored The Broken People, and today, she’s sharing Fixer.

Fixer

I was born into this broken world nineteen years ago.  It was three months before my due date and I was fighting for my life. The will to live is instinctive.  It’s remarkable really, how a tiny two and a half pound baby will struggle against collapsing lungs in order to breathe.

How she will struggle blindly to stay alive.

Sometimes, all of the prejudice, and all of the brokenness in this world brings me to my knees.  For a fleeting moment, I find myself wondering, “Why? Why did I stay? Why would anyone want to be here?”

Compassion. That is why we stay; that one word embodies everything that’s amazing about this world of ours. I nearly lost the chance to live on this crazy, beautiful planet, but I’m so grateful that I’m here today, so grateful that somehow, I knew that life was worth fighting for. I look at the world before me and I see brokenness, yes, but more than that, I see compassion, so much compassion. I see people reaching out to those in pain, whispering, Let me help you.  

People dropping to their knees to pray for more goodness.

I see eight-year-old Andrew, whose body was paralyzed after he was hit by a car, but whose spirit is anything but paralyzed. I see Emily, reaching out a hand to help me to my feet after I have fallen. These people, they show us that life equals empowerment, life equals an opportunity to change the world and to fix the brokenness around us.

When I was three years old, my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I said, Daddy, I want to be a fixer.

I hear Kristi speak of “Our Land,”  this land of empathy that we are building together, and I realize that we are already fixers.

I am a fixer. You are a fixer.

All of us.

You don’t need to be grown-up to be a fixer.  You don’t need a college degree.

Tucker is a fixer, Boo is a fixer, I am a fixer.

And you, too — you are a fixer. Together, one piece at a time, we’re changing this world, spreading compassion and showing that different is more than okay.

Different is beautiful.

Kerry has spastic diplegia cerebral palsy and is the only girl in a set of triplets (which definitely has its perks…she gets her own bedroom!).  Through her every day interactions and her writing, Kerry truly makes a difference by spreading compassion and understanding.  Her writing is beautiful and insightful and just plain awesome.  See more of it on her personal blog Transcending CP.

Editor’s note: in the photo above, don’t you just love her fuzzy hair and the fact that the preemie sized diaper totally dwarfs her?  EEEP!