I wasn’t always soft.
For a long time, I didn’t really understand love — not the kind that costs you something. I grew up going to church, but somewhere along the way I went cold. Hard, even. I had walls up that I didn’t even know were walls. I thought that was just who I was.
Then I went to India.
I’d always wanted to go on a missions trip but kept finding reasons to wait — too far, too long, too much. But eventually I went anyway. And that trip didn’t just change what I believed. It changed who I was.
I met the Dalit children there — kids born into a caste system where they’re considered untouchable. Not just looked down on. Untouched. Beneath notice. In some places, animals were treated with more value than they were.
And somehow, those children are the ones who broke me open.
I held their hands. I sang with them. I sat on the ground, ate with them, played with them, and just — stayed present. And somewhere in all of that ordinary closeness, my heart cracked in the best possible way. I went back a second time. Two weeks, twice — serving, sharing the gospel, but more than anything, just loving people the way I wished someone had loved them long before I got there.
I came home, and I knew. This wasn’t a trip. This was who I was always supposed to be.
So I started something. I named it Invisible Hearts — a nonprofit, born out of everything that broke and then rebuilt itself in me on the other side of the world.
Life didn’t move in a straight line after that. I started working at Mercedes-Benz USA, and the years filled up fast. The dream didn’t disappear — it just got quiet. I’ve kept Invisible Hearts alive since 2013, paying to renew it every single year, even without a bank account behind it, even without anyone investing in it but me. It’s been sitting there, waiting. Not because I forgot. Because I never let it go.
I’m still figuring out what it means to carry a dream this big while living a life that’s still, in a lot of ways, sorta done.
That’s the truth of it. I’m not on the other side of this story. I’m in the middle of it — same as you.
So if you’re here because something on SEEN found you in a moment you needed it, I want you to know: I write those words to you the same way I’d want someone to write them to me. Not from someone who has it all figured out. From someone who is still becoming.
I’d love for you to journey with me — through the everyday, the sorta done, the still-becoming, all of it.
There’s more of this story to tell. This was just the beginning.
Still here. Still His. And that’s enough.
— Cynn