Shawn Haggerty met Jacob.

I am so thankful that I got to meet Jacob.

For those of you who have seen Invisible Children, you know Jacob as the 14 year old boy who cried after being asked what he would say to his brother who was murdered by the LRA. The one who said he had nothing, and that he would rather die than stay on earth.

When I first watched Invisible Children, it was this moment in the film that broke my heart and changed my life. When he cried, it was a cry of real, raw pain, the kind of pain most of us, especially me have never come close to feeling. Something inside of me snapped and I realized that this is REAL, and its happening NOW. Inexucusable atrocity and horror. All I could do was silently apologize to the Jacob on the screen, crying tears of regret. How could I have turned my eyes away for my 19 years and done nothing? Right there I promised that I would never again live that way, unfeeling and apathetic.

So that was February 9th..
And yesterday was April April 27th..

And I got to meet Jacob.

We were at the Invisible Children offices, standing in the hallway with a few of the people who work there, and Jason and a boy walk out of the office. Jason goes, "have you guys met Jacob?" and I saw a very familiar shy face looking at me. And immediately my heart was in my mouth. Jacob? Could it be the same Jacob who forever affected me, who I cried for and prayed for, who I apologized to and promised to never look away from? And there he was, shaking my hand with a shy smile and then reaching to hug me. They had flown him from Uganda to the states for the GNC, getting him a passport last minute.

I was truly in that moment. I was right there, my heart and mind and soul, all of me was right there in that hug. It was a moment planned by Him. A gift to me, a gift to him. Theres so much I could say if I had hours but I just had a moment, and I took it. Its so hard to put into words, but moments like those tell me I am on the right track, that there is nothing more important than people and compassion. Everything else fades into the background. The fact that I am flat broke, the fact that I have a million finals and papers coming up and no time this weekend to start, the people who have been bugging me or hurting me lately.. Its all gone. It might make no sense but I really experienced Him in that moment. I'm learning more and more that He doesn't make sense to me, or that I can't make sense of Him, and it makes Him all the more wonderful and mysterious. It was like a taste of what it is to fulfill my purpose. Jacob was only one, but he represents the hundreds of thousands of war-torn kids in Uganda. I plan to hug all of them.

Amazing.