I’m linking up with Casey Leigh today because I’ve got something on my heart that I need to say out loud before I pour myself a glass of I-made-it-to-Friday-night-wine and settle into a weekend that promises to look very much like you would expect: safe, predictable, and well-worn with just the right mix of sunshine and youth baseball to keep a girl out of trouble.
So here goes…
It’s become clear to me over the last month that I’m living a sanitized, insulated, mostly-about-me kind of life.
I really am.
Very little about the world breaks my heart these days because, honestly, I’m just not looking at it. I never turn on the news, I haven’t voted since 2008, and God help me if I ever start sincerely investigating where my clothes, coffee, and other creature comforts come from.
If Jimmy Fallon hasn’t mentioned it, then I don’t know about it, and until recently I have been totally cool with that.
Maybe this is your story, too? Perhaps like me, you live out your days unaware and untouched by the injustice and brokenness in the world because, gosh, what could little ‘ol you do about it anyway?
I know.
I know what it’s like to feel this way, and I know what it’s like to live this way.
It costs nothing, it wrecks nothing, it changes nothing.
But then it gets old, doesn’t it? Because we weren’t meant to live this way, with our eyes only half open.
I know this because the first time I decided to open my eyes, God reframed and redefined my perspective of Biblical womanhood and everything changed in my marriage and in my mothering.
The second time? He walked my family through the doors of international adoption.
The last time? He cannonballed us into church planting in Las Vegas.
But lately? Lately I’ve been playing it safe and living oh-so comfortably in an ignorance-by-day, Netflix-by-night bubble and then wondering why God isn’t giving me anything new to say.
So what’s a girl to do?
Well, this girl is starting small.
With books.
Five a month if you really want to know.
I’m reading all kinds of things from all kinds of people with the hope that my eyes will begin to widen with each one I finish. This seemed to work for me in the past, so why not try it again?
I know, it’s so creative and cutting edge of me, right?
No, but seriously. Each month I’m committing to reading a couple of books about something I am completely blind to because I haven’t bothered to look in that particular direction until now.
This month it was sex trafficking.
Oh, dear God.
I had NO idea, Annie Lobert. NO idea at. all. I’m so very sorry for that. God bless you for being so damn brave.
Next month it’s poverty, homelessness and, um, excusemebut where do my jeans come from?
I don’t know where any of this is going to lead, but I’ve decided it doesn’t matter.
I’d love it if you would join me.
Not because we have to save the world, but because we should at least see it.
For what it is.
For what it could be.
For who we are supposed to be in it.
So that’s what’s on my heart.
Wishing you an eyes-wide-open Valentine’s Day,
Kristen
