Our silence is deafening.
You. Guys.
OUR
SILENCE IS DEAFENING.
Look, I get it. I
do. I have struggled with what to say
and how to say it. I don't want to make
a tenuous situation worse, I don't want to feel like I am backtracking and
trying to explain myself and I certainly don't want to cause anymore pain.
But by saying nothing, we are choosing to let the darkness
win.
I find myself often not understanding why the hash tag is
#blacklivesmatter when I feel that #alllivesmatter. But let's set that aside for a minute. The point of #blacklivesmatter is because
they feel that they don't matter and they want to matter. So deeply.
And when we're being down in the gut raw and honest, it's
what we all want. The career criminal
started out as a young kid who wanted to matter. The SAHM who drinks every night to de stress,
she wants to matter too. The addict that
just can't beat their demon, she also wants to matter to someone. We all have places and stages and areas of
our lives where we feel we don't matter. It's a sad and lonely place, no matter how
many people experience it before you, with you, after you. There are so many examples I could have used
above, I could have gone on and on and on.
Part of the solution is for each one of us, every single
one of us, to treat everyone like they matter.
Every single person we come in contact with needs to know that they
matter. They are important and valuable
and they bring something awesome, amazing and worthy that only they can bring to the earth.
So I don't know the right thing to say or the perfect thing
to do, but I do know that it starts with me.
It starts with being kind. Having
hard conversations with people we don't understand in a reasonable and courteous ways. Seeking first to understand, then be understood. Putting other people's needs before our
own. It starts with serving.
Our society has gotten so far away from caring for each
other. All we want to do is cast
blame. And I understand that...We need someone or something to blame all the hate
and all the violence on. We can fight a
person or hate a person so much easier than we can handle the pain. But violence that begets violence is never
the answer, it may temporarily make us
feel like we've done something, but all we've done is joined the cycle of
violence. It is going to take true
strength, humility and meekness to win this fight.
We have to lay down our rights and protect those whose
rights are being ignored. Being trampled
on. We might even belong to a group that
feels it has no rights.
I would rather lay down my right to blame, my right to
anger, my right to be right than live in this world gone mad.
I know that I might not impact the whole world, but I will
impact my neighborhood. My children. My
community.
We all have a choice to make. Sit on the sidelines feeling sad and comment on what's
happening or get involved and be a game changer.
I'm still deathly afraid I'm going to say the wrong thing or
do the wrong thing, but the deafening silence can no longer be my defense. I matter.
And I'm going to make sure other people matter too.
