So much brokeness.
I sit in the silence while my heart breaks. Inside my head I am all but silent. The brokeness of this world feels so heavy tonight.
As I sent my daughter to bed, fresh tears in her eyes, I struggled to find the right words to comfort her. Because things aren’t always okay and there aren’t always answers. And people don’t always say they are sorry. And even if they do, sometimes they don’t really mean it. And kids can be mean. And we sometimes let each other down.
Why does it have to be this way? Why do our hurts fester until all the bad things come out on all the wrong people? Why is it painful to expose weakness? And strength and pride are exhaulted? Why is it looked down upon to be the youngest? The brownest? The smallest? The largest? The tallest? The loudest? The quietest? or different? Just different, even though we aren’t at all the same. Or maybe we are.
Maybe it hurts because we are all broken. Maybe it hurts because it’s true. Maybe it hurts because we don’t remember who we are or whose we are. We are his.
His beloved. His children. His chosen. His…adopted sons and daughters.
Photo Credit: Bethany Burt
And maybe this life is really just too short to worry about guarding our hearts and our homes. Maybe this life is too precious to spend it on so much anxiety. Maybe our breaths are so few we should not waste them on these things. Maybe we should put our weak strength into deep love.
What if we have room for the lonely? We have food for the hungry? We have encouragement for the sad?
What if we go forward with scared, brave steps? What if we love boldy, wildly, with hope? Hope feels lost…but hope is already found. Here. Here in our homes and our churches and our families, in us. In our words and our hugs and our forgiveness. Hope is free. The Lord provides. He provides love and peace and strength. Grace enough for today. And really, isn’t that what we need? Grace enough for today and no more. Food enough for right now. If we have plenty, then we have even more to give.
My children, who have had nothing, are willing to give more than I, who have never lacked for anything. I have watched my son generously and selflessly sacrifice, putting other’s needs before his own. Where he came from, he may not have had much, but what they had, they shared.
As adults, we still fight this battle. We look at our differences, economic, race, employment, status. We see the differences instead of the likeness. We see the faults, the failures, the not-good-enough. We see the need and we judge their poor choices. We are failing our kids when our kids are more generous, less judgemental, more kind, more loving, more forgiving than we are.
I am the first to tell you, I will defend my children. I will get mama bear on you with no regrets. Until my child was afraid to tell me hurtful things that were said to her. Why? I asked her. Because she didn’t want me not to like them anymore. She didn’t want me to not let them come over anymore or hang out. She surmised that they must have been having a bad day.
Forgiveness isn’t easy. Compassion isn’t natural. Love isn’t always simple.
Photo Credit: Bethany Burt
But the Lord. He gives grace for the day.
And at the end of it, it doesn’t matter if we send our kids to public school or private or homeschool It doesn’t matter if my kid is the youngest or the oldest or the brownest or loudest. Our roots are the same. We are all created in the image of God. What matters is love.