Early on in my time serving with CBM, I recall sitting in a taxi stuck in unimaginable traffic in New Delhi, India, the surging heat and sun pulsing through the rolled down windows. It was 2009. I was there for CBM’s first Global Conference, a gathering of all our Field Staff from around the world.

While I was excited to be with my colleagues, I’d left my husband and daughter Sophie back home. At just 18 months old, she was in the most delightful stage of toddlerhood, and despite the organizational watershed moment I was experiencing, a large part of me just wanted to be home. I imagined all her ‘firsts’ I would be missing as she learned to master new words and physical abilities every day.

As a workaholic who had married later in life, I was shocked to realize how much motherhood had profoundly transformed me. I never particularly liked kids, and they similarly seemed not to care for me very much either. Having my own children necessitated building relationships with their friends and families, and I eventually grew to love them as much as my own. Now, a spot in my heart seems to be forever reserved for every child I cross paths with, which a younger me could never have imagined.

As I sat in that taxi realizing we weren’t going anywhere fast that afternoon, I wondered what Sophie had done that day and what I had missed. Suddenly, I was brought back to the present by the sound of a young girl’s voice saying, ‘change, change’. She moved swiftly, shaking the few coins in her tambourine as she moved from car to car before coming to my window. I looked at this tiny girl, just a few years older than my daughter, as she glanced at me with hope that I would add to her paltry earnings from the day, and all I could feel was shame that I had so little to offer. My few coins weren’t enough to even buy her family a day’s worth of food, let alone change her future.

For many years afterward, I couldn’t shake the grief and anger I had at the injustice of the world, where one girl gets to grow up with an abundance of opportunity while another must fight for survival from early childhood. Inspired by this experience, CBM created the She Matters campaign to help raise awareness and support for global gender equity. Over several years, countless churches and individuals participated in giving girls access to education, providing a hand-up to small-scale female entrepreneurs, training women leaders and engaging in advocacy for Indigenous women. Yet despite the success of the campaign and the meaningful assistance we have been able to provide to girls and women, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the only reason I had this encounter that day. Certainly, what needed changing was the plight of women, but what also needed transformation was my own heart.

I have always been impatient to see change happen. No matter the speed, it is never fast enough. The desire for quick fixes is a natural compassionate response where there is suffering, but equally important is the willingness to be present for the long haul. Though jarring experiences like the one I had are disorienting and troubling, they are also necessary. It is easy for us to stand from afar and comment on the world’s events from a safe distance when we may hardly feel the personal impacts of painful global issues in our own lives. To become a true ally to the marginalized necessitates investment of relationship. While our sacrificial gifts are an essential part of being co-workers with God in realizing individual and social transformation, he also wants to bring about lasting change within us that results in seeing people not as problems to be solved, but as beings equally deserving of dignity because they are made in his image. Our personal transformation demonstrates to the world that we take the offer of God’s redemption seriously. This means an intentional submission of our personal desires to align with his values, and the laying down of all our idols: a self-centred worldview that prioritizes our own benefit, the ways we choose to spend our money and time, and most importantly, how much we are willing to love God and our neighbour a little more each day.