Silent no more

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.