It’s crazy out there, isn’t it? The banter and the name calling, the rhetorical one-upping, and the utter loss of respectful modes of communication from the top down. I feel like I am watching a street fight with wide eyes, every so often hearing my own voice chime in with a “yes, good hit!” and then immediately feeling ashamed for condoning violence at all. It is so much easier to just hide away, to close the browser, turn off the news, and just stop talking about all these things: these leaders and laws and marches and 'who exactly are we keeping away and why?'. But history does not have a strong record of happy endings when too many people look away.

Today, I have three little babies right in front of me. They are so innocent, so blissfully unaware of the rhetoric informing the world they are growing up in. But not for long. They see my despondent demeanor, they catch moments of conversations that don’t yet make sense but plant words and emotions they grapple with. They do not know what they do not know yet, but the puzzle pieces are collecting and putting together a scene of history that is, and will be, theirs. If for no one else but them, I want to lean in to conversations. In fact, I have to. Truthfully, I’m not sure how to put all of these puzzle pieces together either. 

I cannot and will not attempt to explain executive orders. I am far too unfamiliar with government structures and systems to speak to them. If I am honest, I could not even name the members of my local city council, so making generalizations about our government feels unfair. I have many questions and many concerns, and a gut-level reaction that is waving a red flag at what is happening on a policy level, but I do not feel informed enough to speak to them, not yet.

I am also just a mom. I stay home with my kids and teach a little bit and find the fringe hours to put together words but I am not a lawyer, a lobbyist, a government employee, a journalist, economist, historian or anyone else who has the background and context to understand both immigration and law.  

But on the other hand, I am a mom! Full stop. And I think that qualifies me for a whole lot. It makes me both a stakeholder and an influencer, and it also means I get a say in all of this and how I let the conversations 'out there'  take on life in our home. And the problem I see right in front of me, the thing that this mom can do something about today, is fear.

I am also crazy about Jesus, so I start there, with what I know about him and how he felt about people, and about fear.

 And he was pretty clear on both of those things.

Jesus had immense, palpable compassion for people; for his followers who often had such trouble actually understanding him, and for the lost who often could not recognize him. He came with truth and never shied away from it, but his gospel was not one of self-preservation. And he spoke about fear often, never once saying that it was acceptable to live with but always reminding us that there was really only one thing to be afraid of: our own sin.

I do not say this lightly, but I think we sorely misunderstand following Jesus if we believe faith in him is in any way about self-preservation. And I think we thwart efforts for the gospel to move forward when we let fear get too big. Because when we are scared, we get a little too pushy about the boundaries of our self-preservation and we tend to start drawing the lines of our safety further and further away. But logic tells us what happens when we decide our lives need to take up more space: someone else loses theirs.

But this is where I, just a mom, come in. This is when I choose the true gospel of grace by faith, centered on a man who willingly lost his life to save mine; not the American gospel of save yourself, centered on an ideology that our lives are more valuable because they are privileged, or that this life is all that we have.

Grace by faith remembers the sovereignty of God and falls to our knees at the reality of who we are without Jesus. It declares and reminds our hearts every single day that God is either fully in control or not at all, even when we have no possible way of understanding all his reasons. Grace by faith says the way to true life is found in laying ours down, and quite possibly losing it, keeping true fear in a proper perspective. Grace by faith says his glory is far more important than my security. Grace by faith remembers that we have a breath of time to know Jesus in this world and an eternity to finally enjoy him forever.

I do not take safety for granted. I want to feel safe, and I want my kids to feel safe. Of course I do. And I think we are allowed that. We make decisions every day to draw those lines of safety in places that allow our hearts to rest, and those are all a little bit different for each of us. We pick schools, foods, locations, cars, and a hundred other things for our children based on what we believe is safest.

But what I am determined not to do is draw a boundary line of safety so big that I can no longer reach anyone with the gospel. Or a line so big it hurts another mama’s chance at safety for her babies. Or a line so big I get comfortable in a home I was never meant to be all that comfortable in, but rather create a home I am willing to risk losing in order to gain the one I was actually created for. Only grace by faith can help me keep those lines in the right place.

I am just a mom, but I am the mom who is going to teach my three about fear, so that makes me, and all of us just moms, pretty damn important. My kids are either going to learn to be afraid of everyone and everything- of entire people groups, of turbans and accents and different shades of skin- or they are going to learn that we are all sinners in need of a savior, and that we are only to be afraid of what can kill the soul, not the body. I’m determined to teach them the latter, for one simple reason: that is what Jesus taught us. 

So today, this mama chooses faith, and actually counts my life as nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus. Because I want the life I have been given to matter. I want to do what I see Jesus commanding us to do.

I am just a mom, but I think I have the most important job in the world right now.

It all feels overwhelming sometimes, doesn’t it?  The headlines, the statistics, the almost routine mention of another capsized boat or a small group of sojourners’ bodies found dead along the border of two countries.  We Americans are generally a people of short attention spans: rocked and saddened over Aylan’s little body one day, moving on to a celebrity’s fall from grace or our football team’s poor performance the next.  This mostly steady emotional barometer towards the plight of so much of the world tends to mark the cadence of our lives; we give a nod or acknowledgment to headlines and news stories that, while they should shock us, leave us with a mostly unmoving response.  Or far worse, no response at all.  And then, we carry on.

This cannot be.  It can’t.  I am begging you, friends, to respond.

But how?  How!?  What can I do about ISIS? President Al-Assad?  The Middle East?  I hear these questions, they resound in my mind, too.  And they are valid: most of us are not in any sort of position to speak to these loaded political and governmental concerns and we will likely never be. 

But let’s not do something: let’s not, as Christ-followers, put our God on the same level as our politicians, weighing the power of each with equal belief and confidence.  That’s not even a thing.  Scripture tells the story of a God who has never once wavered in authority over all kingdoms and governments and leaders*.  Never, not one time, has he not been in charge— and this is true in every generation, every pocket of history.  It remains true today.  So that is where I start, with a clear reminder to myself that the terror of my moment in history is not un-watched by the God of all history.

The next thing we can do is know.  Stop looking away.  Read the stories, as many of them as you can.  Know that more than 12 million innocent men, women, and children have been forced from their homes in Syria.  Sit with that number for a moment, will you?  Really think about how many people that is.  Or picture your hometown, the traffic and the grocery stores and the busyness of people moving from here to there; moms doing school drop-offs and parents heading to work, meeting friends for coffee and closing business deals… and now picture it silent.  No food on the store shelves.  No cars on the streets.  No access to hospitals.  Banks are closed.  The water is shut off.  Maybe the biggest buildings are bombed out or perhaps the terrorist group has forced everyone in to hiding.  But there is nothing left of your life, and you find yourself having to answer questions like this: “do we take grandma with us as we flee or will she not make it anyway?”  That’s not really a choice; it is a life-sentence to guilt no matter how one answers it. See this in your mind, friends, because it is real for millions of our global brothers and sisters right this moment.

Once you know, allow it to hurt.  It is ok for someone else’s pain to hurt.  I would argue that it is good.  That hurting is the birthplace of compassion—the kind of compassion Jesus felt when he saw the hungry crowd**, the kind of compassion that means to “suffer with,” and the kind of compassion that makes a space in our lives for the Holy Spirit to come in and inspire.  And that is where we respond with prayer. Just prayer.  So simple, isn’t it?  Oh, but so, so powerful, and perhaps the most important work we can do,  if we truly believe in it.  I think that it gives God the honor he is due when we tell him out loud that we trust him with all of this, and that we believe in him for justice. 

When we go to scripture as our guide, we see thousands of years of men and women petitioning God for help, for answers, and for peace.  We read the greatest writer of the new testament, the Apostle Paul, offering prayers for the hearers of his letters and begging for them for himself at the same time; praying for protection (2 Thessalonians 3:2), for grace (1 Corinthians 16:23), and for clarity and boldness in his words (Ephesians 6:19-20) so that the gospel might go forward and believers would multiply.  If you are wondering how to start praying for Syria (or any number of injustices, countries, or people groups), may I humbly suggest that is a good model to begin with: protection in the face of danger, grace in the midst of chaos, clarity for those sharing the gospel and understanding for those hearing it.  We do not know how our prayers will be answered but we know that they will be heard, and most assuredly, heard by the only One who is perfect and able to answer with flawless justice, impeccable timing, and eternal truth.         

While I believe to my toes that prayer is the most important thing we can do for others, my hope is that as far as we are able, it is not the only thing we do for others.  Let’s not scoff at sacrificial giving, either.  That old Christian alliteration for stewardship applies perfectly here, because between our time, talents, and treasures we can all do something: are you a lawyer who can advocate for asylum?  A doctor or nurse who can volunteer for a few weeks with any number of refugee agencies?  A stay-at-home mom who can make room in her home for a refugee family (or an orphan, a single mom, anyone) for a few months?  I promise if you want a role in helping—with one of the statistically greatest humanitarian crises of our time, or any number of equally heart-breaking injustices— start asking questions and you will find one.  And there is also giving our money, which often feels like the easy thing but it is no small thing.  Because maybe you know someone willing to go, he just needs someone else willing to give.  Or you read about the agencies doing great work but who are sorely under resourced and you give to meet a need and help spread the gospel.   There are great people on the front lines but they are out of resources, leaving them with little capacity to help stop the hemorrhaging of the refugee crisis. Last week I read that on the Greek border refugee camps built for 500 people are housing 5000.  Put this perspective in to our world: the house we comfortably live in with 5 people would all of a sudden have 50. Wouldn’t we all feel the sting and meaning of under resourced in a moment like that?         

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I had the great privilege of speaking to the Chief Catalyst at World Vision last week, and the stories he told me after a trip to Lebanon to the refugee camp in Beirut are, in the truest sense, unbelievable.  And I mean that.  They are hard to believe.  In his words, “Utterly beyond anyone’s capacity to take it in.” It’s crowded.  Abuse is rampant.  Food and water supplies are low, a thriving black market is gaining steam.  Children are drawing pictures of their homes and remembering details like grenades scattered on the floor.  For so many of the refugees, after three years away from everything they know and no real means to an end in sight, a catastrophic loss of hope has settled in.  Truly, there are few things with more devastating consequences than that.

So what will we do?  As some of the most resourced Christians on the planet, the answer simply cannot be nothing.  And every agency on the frontlines, every humanitarian worker who has been there, every Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan, or other beautiful refugee face will beg you to not let that be the answer.  We can do hard things, friends.  But most certainly, we can do these things: Remember. Learn. Feel. Pray. Act.

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Want to do something right now?!  My talented friend Margaret has created the adorable printable in the picture above to remind us to do the simple yet profound work of praying.  It’s yours for a donation of $5, $10, $25 or $50 dollars.  If you know me at all, you know that keeping your money will never be my style, and EVERY SINGLE PENNY of proceeds from these printables is going to World Vision.  And I think we could make a teensy, tiny little dent, friends.

Print out your reminder and then do the most important work: prayer. Pray for the refugees and their loss of hope in the world to be found in Christ.  Pray for the agencies and volunteers pouring themselves out.  Pray for President Al-Assad.  Pray for President Obama.  Pray for your own ideas to grow.  Pray for a small community of friends around you to encourage your creative passions and increase your capacity to give.  Pray to feel this.  Friends, let's talk to Jesus about it all and watch him work in our hearts and in the world.  This story, and so many others riddled with the most nefarious acts humanity is possible of, are not unseen by him.  In fact I believe his heart is broken over them.  There is not a believer on the planet who has not been invited to be a part of his work in the world in some way.  We can, y'all, and we must.   

{Printables available October 28-November 6: TEN DAYS, y'all.  Get yours.  Print it.  Share it.  Pray out loud.  Let's do something cool together}

*Because donators receive a printable, donations made through Just Enough Brave are NOT considered tax-deductible.  If you would like your donation to be tax-deductible, please visit one of the organizations linked in this essay and donate straight to them.

Scripture references (worth memorizing!)
*Daniel 2:21
**Mark 6:34

I can’t stop looking at Aylan.  And I’m sure you’ve seen it, too, the image of a tiny little body with his face down on the sand.  I can’t stop looking because if I trade the sand for a light green bed sheet, the waves for the safety of crib rails, and the shoes for the pajama feet, that is what my little Cannon looks like when he sleeps: arms to his side, on his tummy, no care in the world.

But that was never Aylan’s story. At three years old he has never known a life that wasn’t marred by ISIS and civil war.  He was born into fear, and bless him and keep him forever, Jesus, he died in fear. As a mama, the thought of having my babies on my lap one moment and then reaching and screaming and crying out for them in the rough waters of the ocean the next is enough to put my heart in panic mode even as I sit at my kitchen table.  And she couldn’t swim herself, Aylan’s mama.  She had to have felt the panic before she and her husband paid most of their life savings to someone they did not know to put everything precious in the world on a boat for the journey towards a land where bombs were not going off and terrorists were not coming to their door to rape, kill, and torture them.  She must have felt in her heart not to do it.  But what choice was there?  Possible death or certain death?  Oh friends, that is no choice at all for our Syrian sisters and brothers.

Five years ago, God put a fire in my belly, this burden to do something.  I heard stories I can’t un-hear, I saw images, like Aylan, that I cannot un-see.  I feel guilt that I cannot for anything in me un-feel.  And I wish you truly knew how much I want to un-feel!  Because some days, like yesterday, it paralyzes me.  I have to be a mom and get lesson plans for my students ready and put dinner on the table and wear actual clothes for a four hour night class and all I can do is read, research, email trusted friends and mentors, listen, sob, look again at Aylan.  And I want to walk away from it, I do.  I want to stop crying when I smell Cannon’s beach-wavy hair.  I can’t.

So I pray, and I search scripture, and I write.  At one point yesterday Alex and I had three bibles and two commentaries open, because if we know anything it is that God’s word has the answers and we have to start with him.  But scripture only confirms what I have known for years to be true: we are supposed to feel others’ pain this much.  The system is rigged, friends.  The more we desire to be like Jesus, the more the pain of our friends, community, and the world will wreck us.  There is no pressing in hard to a life following Jesus that will not come with a terrible burden for the well-being of others.  It just is not there.

A great tensions exists in the life of a Christ-follower: the desire for wholeness, self-worth, healing in our broken pasts, thriving marriages, godly children, and hospitable homes set up against the backdrop of a very, very broken world.  The fact that a young girl in Cambodia was just bought for the price of a few of my caramel macchiatos.  The ‘abundant life’ Jesus said he came to bring us juxtaposed with the reality that life is anything but abundant for so, so many.  I have spent so many weeks and months of the past few years feeling like I cannot manage this kind of tension, it’s too thick and heavy.  I wonder if many of us feel like this: we don’t know what to do so we mostly look away.  Or, you may or may not go into the kind of crazy cycle I did a few years ago and throw away all the lavish purchases you had ever made in the name of repentance—my personal sackcloth and ashes moments.  But I don’t think either of those are right, because the former is an attempt to justify ourselves with the “there’s nothing I can really do" mentality and the later is an attempt to justify ourselves by saying “look what I just did!”  Neither line up biblically, where justification is found only in Jesus and his work on the cross.

God did not accidentally put us in this place and time in history.  I did not end up in Spokane, Washington with a husband, two babies, and one on the way outside of what he ordained or allowed in my life.  And I don’t believe that God wants me walking through life apologizing for everything I have that so much of the world does not.  Salvation through poverty is not his plan for beautiful redemption.  But I am also convinced of this to my very core: we are supposed to feel pain for others as much as we feel it for ourselves.  And I think this means fighting back.  It means using my resources in any and every creative manner that I can come up with.  It means prayer, the on our knees, groaning because we don’t know what to say to Aylan’s father kind of prayer.  It means giving sacrificially, considering what our family can do without this month and sending that amount away with trust that God will use it.  It means pushing my daughter on the swing and talking to other mamas about refugees at the same time.  It means Voxing conversations back and fourth all day with a friend talking about dentist appointments and justice in consecutive thoughts.  It means buying pretty flowers at Trader Joe’s for my table and looking at devastatingly painful pictures on the same day.

I can only think of this tension as a rather narrow ridge we are walking on.  But friends, we have to try.  We have to.  In so many ways the footing is a bit more sure on one side or the other, but the life of Jesus was one of both celebration and mourning, and I think he showed us how to do both so that we could do both.  We must do both.  We can be mamas who playdate and advocate.  We can be wives who serve dinner and the homeless, fatherless, or anyone with less.  We can be business owners who make money and a mark in the world. We can be girlfriends who have wine nights and prayer nights.  We can be parents who sign homework folders and petitions.  We can enjoy every beautiful thing God gave us, and we can work tirelessly to help others experience that beauty, too.  There is no formula.  There is just an unapologetic pursuit of Jesus, and the way he shows each of us as we do. 

And to our church and faith leaders: you can ask hard things of us.  You can beg us to look, to empty our wallets, to know what the world is facing outside of our walls.  I promise we can handle it.  We can clap joyfully at the baptism of new family and celebrate wildly when wayward children come back; and we can cry for Syria and Nigeria and so much of the world on the very same day. We can do both, because Jesus did both. We will follow your lead on this.  Please, ask us to do hard things for others.  Give us scripture to sustain us when we are weary and offer a place to rest when we need it, but don’t go easy on us.  If our faith in Jesus is real, it can stand up to pain in the most raw places.  Teach us how to be like our Savior. 

William Wilberforce, one of my heroes of history, will always be famous in our home for his tireless effort to use his position to speak for those who were not allowed a voice.  I think he found that narrow ridge, and history is different because of him.  He also said these words, which I leave you with today: “You can choose to look the other way, but you cannot say you didn’t know.”  Let’s keep looking friends.