Brave, Anyway

Tag: peace

  • Be Strong Right Now

    Be Strong Right Now

    I struggle to be at rest when I don’t have things figured out or when I am overwhelmed. I don’t have to know the answer, but I need to at least identify the next step. What is the next right thing to do?

    All week, my thoughts have been disorganized and full of feelings. Sadness. Despair. Frustration. Rage. And just as I was trying to focus on God and church and a sermon and peace this morning, I opened an email about our schools partnering with the city to remember the lives lost here 3 years ago – asking that “we reflect together on the essence of #VBStrong” – and it really triggered me.

    The hashtag #VBStrong seriously pisses me off. We should not have to be strong. We are capable of taking steps to prevent the situations that result in these stupid hashtags.

    I went back to my journal entry from three years ago and realized that absolutely nothing in this city or this country has changed.

    Why can’t we start being strong in the areas that could help prevent these things from occurring? Why can’t we be strong when we vote, supporting candidates who support mental health care and background checks and reforms? Why can’t we be strong about a commitment to finding a compromise on gun control? Why aren’t we willing to put our strength into finding a compromise that shows that our commitment to life and quality of life is more important than our commitment to allow anyone to own any kind of weapon? Why are we just perpetually stuck in an argument about what we can and can’t have and what medical conditions we will and won’t help with, and then relying on each other to be strong when the guns we won’t give up end up in hands that kill our family members and our children and our neighbors?

    We should all be horrified by and convicted by The New York Times Sunday Review cover today.


    Our belief that gun violence won’t impact us personally may have been the original reason we were quiet, but at this point we must all accept and admit that our inaction and our selfishness and our obstinance got us here.

    I am done with all the reasons for not talking about it right now, with all the reasons this is really mostly a mental health issue, and with whining and indignant quoting of the second amendment. Those are the actions of cowards – people afraid of losing money, people afraid of losing votes, people afraid of losing power or control, people afraid that they have been complicit. News flash: you, we, are complicit. Our inaction makes us complicit.

    I don’t live in Texas and I have no idea if I agree with all the man’s politics, but I cried this week when I watched Beto stand up and call a thing a thing and call liars liars. There is no longer any right or appropriate time for these sorts of things. People – children – are being gunned down every day in schools, grocery stores, churches, movie theaters. I am so proud of this man in the moment captured in this photo.

    Maybe he wants votes. Maybe he’s a Dad and heartbroken. Maybe both. Likely both. But this took some guts. He has a hell of a lot more courage than most of us – and we stopped him a hell of a lot faster than we stopped an armed 18-year-old in a classroom up the street.

    I am a believer in the second amendment, the purpose of which was to ensure our ability to defend our country and our homes in the event of a tyrannical overtaking of our land or government. But we cannot be so afraid of compromise on finding regulations that we allow our own countrymen with AR-15s to tyrannically overtake our schools and our churches and our grocery stores and our peace.

    Today Audrey and I visited Horton’s Cemetery to talk about what Memorial Day is really about, to honor the memories of such brave men and women, and to pray for all those who mourn. Some fought in World War II, some Korea, some Vietnam, some Iraq. Some were drafted and some volunteered. Some died young and some died old. I read the words of Abraham Lincoln etched in a wall of stone there: “Honor to the Solder, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause.”

    Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery
    Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery

    What did they actually fight for? It wasn’t for our right to own an AR-15. It was so we wouldn’t need to live in fear of evil people who would wield weapons such as that against us.

    We need to be strong right now and actually take steps in the direction of making America safer. We can march. We can write. We can donate. We can vote differently. We can speak differently. We can open our hearts and minds to finding compromise. We can try something. We can try anything.

    In the words of David Hogg, a student survivor from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: “I can respect you have a different opinion than me on guns but I can’t accept that we can’t do anything to save our kids.”

  • Fear and Wrinkles

    Fear and Wrinkles

    I spent the first 20 years of my adult life battling fear of one sort or another. What if this, what if that? How can this or that possibly work out? What am I going to do?

    Born in the seventies, my childhood fears were pretty standard for the time: dolls having secret lives as killers, will I have a date for prom, and the Cold War ending in nuclear war. (Whoever designed the drills where kids hid under desks when missiles were on their way to the east coast clearly did not understand science or psychology.)

    As the teen years turned into the adult years fears become a little more “rational.” At least adult fears were about things with some sort of likelihood of happening. By then I knew my face wasn’t going to peel off because of Poltergeists, so fears became about things like loss or failure or physical harm.

    For a while in my early adult years I was irrationally afraid to fly, which was inconvenient and annoying because I flew with some regularity. A couple of scary flights (one when even the flight attendant was praying!) combined with 9/11 had me convinced that I would be on a plane that Karen Black had to save or that careened into the Potomac River.

    By the time something actually scary happened, I was exhausted from dealing with stupid things and found myself in a real struggle to maintain confidence in God and myself. Three things specifically changed the way I think about fears and the way I react when I feel fearful:

    (1) The prayers of others for me.

    (2) Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer

    (3) Revelations about peace.

    I’ve probably read two dozen books about battling fear. I’ve read every scripture about fear. And I’ve heard it all from people and gurus: “if you give fear an inch in one area it’ll take a foot in that and ten others,” “you have to fight fear with faith,” and even “you’re a Christian who knows where she’s going so you have nothing to fear in terms of death.” (Side note: never, ever say the word death to a person telling you they have fear.)

    Those things are all true, but the two things that finally changed my life as it relates to fear are actually about peace. One of the last things Jesus said was that He was leaving us His peace (John 14) – He understood that fear is a part of the world we live in and He knew that peace is one of the things we’d need the most. And secondly, the words of Moses in Exodus: “The Lord shall fight for you and you shall hold on to your peace.”

    He left me peace and it’s my job to not let it go.

    Or, I have peace and I just need to keep hold of it.

    I loathe fear. It leads to bad decisions, stolen time, stolen happiness, failed businesses, broken relationships, goals not reached, and on and on and on. Life wasted. Lives wasted.

    I cannot afford to live in fear any more, regardless of the news or of viruses or of wars or of presidents or of dictators or of sickness or of disappointment. I have to do what I can do – pray, donate, use my voice, wear a mask – and relinquish the rest. I have to hold on to my peace. And maybe if I do that and others do, too, we’ll even be able to help spread some peace.

    I learned this week that some people actually fear wrinkles and aging! So many people, that the fears have names: gerascophobia and rhytiphobia. My first reaction was how ridiculously vain and silly. But they’re really no more silly than the fears I had – all fears are a distraction that prevent us from really living.

    I sometimes wonder where we’d be or what I could have accomplished if I had learned my lesson about focusing on peace instead of fear sooner. Maybe I’d have a lot fewer wrinkles! But those wrinkles are also my reminder that I have laughed way more than I’ve scrunched my face in anger or fear, and that I’ve smiled way more than I’ve frowned.

    About to start a theme park ride, way outside my comfort zone, so I documented what I briefly thought might be the last ever photo of me. More wrinkles coming soon!
  • Tough Talks

    Tough Talks

    Feast or famine. We’re all getting along gloriously, or annoyed and arguing all day. We find three pairs of shoes we want, or zero pairs of shoes that will be the needed match. The kitchen is full of desserts and we overeat, or we hate everything we see in the pantry.

    Tough conversations also seem to fall into this category. We can go for weeks or months without one, and then suddenly as the girls’ worlds get bigger in some way, I’m ambushed – sometimes caught still trying to map out what I should bring back up when a new subject pops up. What the heck did parents do before portable devices with a pathway to Google?! I rationally know I am not dumb, but I certainly feel like it pretty regularly. And I know the exact face I make when I know I am expected to speak but am out of my comfort zone, and four- letter-naughty words are rattling around in my head.

    Did you know makeup is tested on animals? I knew this, and yet I didn’t really know it. My go-to when unprepared is to respond to a question by asking a question, to buy time and assess the seriousness – a little but what have you heard? – but that didn’t even help here. She’d read a lot by the time she asked me. There’s no good answer for why humans would intentionally hurt animals, whether you’re trying to explain it to a person who doesn’t love animals or to a 10-year-old tender-hearted animal-lover. Cruelty is cruelty and it’s just not right. And no words can erase or explain the images that are so easily found on social media. So I landed on the old “when you know better, you do better” and sat patiently as she went through all of my products. Thankfully only four things ended up in the bad brands pile and a quick trip to Sephora fixed that. I was so proud to watch Audrey proudly tell the guy who greeted us that we were there to replace products by brands that aren’t kind to animals.

    Is abortion a sin? I’ve found that when I don’t feel certain in my answer, often because I am not really sure what I think or believe, that I just focus on statements that I am certain about. (1) Every woman I know who’s had one, whether they ultimately regretted it or not, remembers that day as one of the hardest of her life. (2) 1 in 3 or 4 women have had one, so we all know people who’ve made that choice and people who’ve made that choice fill our churches. (3) It takes two people to create a baby but abortion seems to be a sin of women only, and that’s just wrong. Whether the father is a loving counterpart or an abuser, he didn’t use birth control or tried to and it didn’t work, he drove her to the procedure or didn’t know the details, or maybe he was not around to even find out his counterpart was pregnant – he shares responsibility in the pregnancy and the outcome. (4) If we don’t lean toward empathy for people who’ve had to make this hard choice, no matter what choice they ended up making, we will never have real conversations with many of the people in our lives because shame thrives in environments of judgment.

    I feel weird about x. I hate when I don’t know context and I sense that if I ask a dozen questions to get the needed context I might frustrate the child and the opportunity for the conversation will be lost. If a situation makes you uncomfortable, even if it makes you seem silly to others, remove yourself from the situation. Always follow your gut. Additionally, if your gut says all is ok but something isn’t sitting right with a BFF, follow her gut. Maybe she’s more in touch with the universe today. Or maybe someone who would never be harmful to you would be harmful to her or someone else. Maybe it’s not even about physical harm; maybe it’s about mental peace. Follow your gut and support your tribe when they need to follow theirs. As a Mom or a friend or a colleague or a stranger, we need to support women following their instincts or advocating for who and what comes into their space.

    There’s no reason for this anxiety today. You’re right; today was a good day. But anxiety is not always about what’s happened today. Sometimes it’s about what happened a while ago. Sometimes it’s about lack of sleep or a good meal, sometimes it’s about overstimulation or a trigger, and sometimes it’s just about brain chemistry or hormones. Anxiety isn’t always going to make sense. Time spent in the moment overanalyzing all the reasons it may be happening or shouldn’t be happening is time spent poorly – time spent on how we help someone or ourselves get back to peace is time well spent. Sometimes we will really want to do things that will be a struggle for someone we care about. We can do them on our own or not do them – but part of loving someone with anxiety is not expecting them to do things that will cause them stress and helping them feel safe enough to communicate and to create boundaries, without fear of our reactions.

    Tough conversations make me second guess myself in ways I never do in other areas. Why did I take classes like Women in Cinema or Art History?! I should have been in classes like Explanations for Life’s Big Questions and Appropriate Responses to Drug and Alcohol Questions at Each Age Range.

    Just as I was overthinking all the ways I could maybe go back and touch on a few extra points without being annoying, I found my “Kindness Is” shirt in the mailbox (check out Kind Cotton!). I’d forgotten I ordered it, but it arrived at just the right time. Perhaps as long as we teach our kids the core things, and keep focusing primarily on those, we don’t always have to overthink so much.

  • Goodnight Moon

    Goodnight Moon

    This week seems to be all about the moon. Full moon. Blood moon. Super flower moon. Moonbin rode a bike with training wheels (social media makes us dumber). And I even came back across the moon walk episode of The Crown.

    The moon can somehow be mysterious and comforting and ominous all in one week, or maybe even all at the same time. As a young person first reading and absorbing the not-so-common parts of the Bible, I was absolutely terrified by the thought that the “the sun will turn into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” More recently, I’ve read Goodnight Moon to my girls hundreds of times – Ella always loved saying goodnight to the cow jumping over the moon and Audrey liked the little old lady whispering hush.

    Audrey and I stare at the moon sometimes as we talk at night, especially if her day has been a day. One great lesson the moon teaches is that we often only see one part of a thing – whether it’s waxing or waning in a clear or cloudy sky, we tend to focus only on the parts of things or times or people or situations that we can see, or that we want to see. And sometimes we do that even when we know there is so much more just beyond our current focus or line of sight.

    And then there’s the moon’s surface filled with craters, the result of space stuff colliding into it over however many thousands or gazillions of years, that reminds us that we can take a pretty severe series of hits – physically or mentally or spiritually – and still survive. Our scars, like those craters, bear witness to our strength and resilience and character.

    The moon is something the whole earth has in common. That people of all languages and locations and terrains and beliefs have in common. That humanity has in common. People all over the world look up at the same moon.

    We all share the moon.

    We all seek its light.

    The moon is a reminder that we are all a part of something a little bigger. That we are tiny and the world is vast. That sometimes the situations we think are insurmountable are actually very small.

    Image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter , 2015.

    All of us that look up toward the sky to see the moon are more alike than we are different. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say we’re more alike as it relates to the core things. We want to live in safety and peace. We want shelter and food. We want to be loved and to be treated well. We want to be happy (and our saying for that is over the moon!)

    As I catch up on the news from around the world tonight, I can’t help but think about all the other people looking up.

    Goodnight to those facing sickness; may your bodies and minds find healing, and may you know you are not alone.

    Goodnight to those facing the impact of gun violence; may you be comforted.

    Goodnight to those listening for noises that mean danger; may you stay safe.

    Goodnight to those who are confused; may you find clarity.

    Goodnight to those who fear or are anxious; may your mind be at rest.

    Goodnight to those who are sad, for reasons you know or don’t know; may you find joy.

    Goodnight to those who are angry; may you be filled with love.

    Goodnight to those who don’t have provisions; may they find you or you find them.

    Goodnight to all the helpers; may blessings chase you down.

    And goodnight moon. May all who look upon you this night sleep peacefully.

  • Easter People

    Every Good Friday, and actually on all my dark days, my favorite words of Pope John Paul II always come to mind.

    Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

    More simply, sometimes our Sunday is just 48 hours away.