At first, I thought she cheated my son.  

But when she trudged back up the steep grade of our hill, my frustration softened. Her wide black eyes slid up to mine, her forehead glimmering in sweat. Her faded, two-sizes-too-large men’s T-shirt was pocked with holes. She must have been walking nearly the entirety of the morning in those foam shower slippers with the toes long gone and gaps in their soles. 

After greeting her in the local language, I turned to my housekeeper for help with translation. The girl’s utter fatigue was readily apparent in her soft answers. According to my housekeeper, the girl in her exhaustion didn’t even look at the bill my son had handed her (and only had a second-grade education). She returned the change. 

As I pressed her gently with questions, we discovered she and her siblings were orphans. It was challenging for her elderly, unemployed grandparents to feed them, so her brother was canvassing construction sites for odd jobs, and she walked the local neighborhoods selling kabalagala for two cents per banana cake. 

My heart broke for this girl before me as my kids and I rushed to find her replacement flip-flops, a couple of shirts, a glass of water, a snack.  

What I didn’t anticipate: ultimately, our efforts to help her family falling flat. They refused to let her go to school, instead placing her in dangerous situations.  

My emotions collided for days. I am convinced that for every success story of helping people in pain, there are exponentially more stories of failure to pull people from cycles and behaviors and environments and choices that enslave. 

But when God commanded us to “lift every yoke” He knew the recipients would have issues—their own moments of greed, ingratitude, pride, obliviousness, manipulation, like the rest of us. No matter our best techniques, helping people who suffer will almost always be just plain hard. 

How do I know He knows? Well, because I’m not the rescuer. I’m the rescued. 

I still return to ruts of self-destruction, tearing others along with me. I’m still ungrateful, haughty, and enthralled with all the ways I “deserve” to be helped. 

God calls us to faithfulness, not success. Compassion broadcasts who He is: the God who Sees, who adopts our pain. He remembers, even when it bites Him back. He walks into it not stupidly, but willingly and fully.