Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to the Live Inspired podcast Monday, Morning Moments with John Leary.

There's a quote from Andrea Gibson that goes like this.

Let your heart break. So your spirit doesn't.

Brianna Morales was ready to give up. Although it was Christmas season, she felt defeated,

she felt hopeless, she felt completely absent of joy.

The high school teacher was sitting at the bedside of a former student who had just been shot.

Having already lost more than a dozen current and former students to gun violence in the previous couple years,

this was not an unfamiliar scenario for her.

As she held vigil at the former student's bedside, she was not an unfamiliar scenario for her. As she held vigil at the former student's bedside, she received a phone call that another beloved student, this one a current

student, this one, a young girl named Demaya, had been killed in a car accident. All of a sudden, the losses felt like too much,

and she began a question if her work was even worth the effort.

You see, Brianna teaches at Gordon Bush Alternative Center in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Though just 20 miles from where I grew up, it feels like a world away.

While I enjoyed two loving parents at home, a brother, four sisters down the hall,

a dog in the backyard, family dinners on Sunday nights as a boy,

the realities faced by the young people in East St. Louis are far different.

In this community, one in every three families makes less than $15,000 a year.

Couple this with housing uncertainty, food insecurity, exposure to gun violence,

incarcerated family members, and substance abuse issues.

Perhaps it's not surprising that many kids in their communities feel hopeless and powerless. Feeling powerless

herself, Brianna was ready to walk away from it all. But then Brianna remembered the why behind her

work. She recognized that it was in opening her heart to the weight of the challenges and suffering

...