It's been a hell of a season, hasn't it?
In conversations over zoom, in person, through face masks and over copious cups of hot beverages I have heard it again and again. We are weary. We are struggling. We are aching.
We got the proverbial wind knocked out of us. We have been repeatedly kicked while down. We have absorbed multiple "last straw" moments and yet we are still standing...Or crawling...Or at least, breathing.
God only knows the details of my hard season and I don't know yours. The struggle has taken many different shapes, colors, and sizes. No two of us share the exact pain, and yet we can share a collective sigh that somehow sums up the experience.
And so here we are.
And yet, in a season where so many are feeling different shades of the same struggle, we find ourselves increasingly divided and hostile. As a natural-born peacemaker, it's exhausting to watch. I have dear friends and family that span a vast range of opinions regarding political, religious (or non-religious), economic, and scientific worldviews (to name a few). It seems that I know people on all extreme ends of the spectrum of opinions.
This is what I have concluded...
2021 was hands down the most difficult year I have lived yet. The perfect storm of circumstances collided during the pandemic for me resulting in the loss of so many precious things. One of those precious things was certainty.
Things like my purpose, my faith, and my passion feel shaken to the core.
I have been questioning so much and so often that some days it feels as if I will wake up and realize I have been unknowingly cast as a supporting character in a satirical TV show. So often I have felt as if nothing matters anymore. As if life is a meaningless and cruel joke. In the chaos of everything that has happened and is happening in the world and in my personal life, is there meaning to be found?
In the ashes of everything I thought I knew, I have discovered something that I believe does matter.
It's love.
See, we humans are so messy, so awful, and so desperately beautiful that it takes my breath away. To experience love is so painful and so necessary that we will stop at nothing to obtain some version of it. We each carry the ability to love and be loved and yet for whatever reasons we withhold it, extinguish it, or abuse it.
This is my plea.
Be kind.
You have no idea the pain that another human is carrying in their soul.
You are no better and no greater than your neighbor that you mock. We are all simply human. You cannot begin to boast of knowing the why behind someone else's behavior. You can speculate, you can guess, you can even puzzle together the handful of facts you hold. But it is not yours to know or to judge another soul. It is yours to love.
That's what makes your life beautiful. Not your opinions, not your knowledge, not your certainty. It's your love.
We are all tired. We are all struggling. We are all aching.
Please, be kind.
Be defined by the one thing that makes humanity beautiful, that makes human life worth living. Be defined by love.
Because it matters.
At the end of the day when everything else has burned to ashes, love matters.
Be kind.
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