What Will We Tell Our Children?
Amidst ukulele lessons and soccer practice and co-op prep and packing for a trip to Colorado, my feed was blowing up with news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, of a murder on a subway, and of multiple school shootings.
On 9/11, I sat with my boys at the school table, fighting back tears, praying for wisdom in how to share the significance of that day. I was exactly Cyrus’s age when the twin towers fell. Through tears, I shared the events of that day from my flooding memories as I watched my son carefully study my face. On the tails of all the senseless killing and vitriolic hatred and division circulating social media, my grief on this anniversary ran a little bit deeper.
What do we tell our children? A question and a burden I am still grappling with.
This world feels overrun with evil and violence; brokenness and decay tarnish a once perfect world. We long with a quiet desperation for all to be made right again. For justice to be brought forth. For Jesus to return. We ache and we grieve all the while trying to keep the magic alive for our children for just a little bit longer.
What do we expose them to in preparation and what do we spare them from out of protection? And what should we expect their response to be? We want a reaction that teeters somewhere between total devastation and utter indifference. We want them to care and feel empathy and compassion, but we don’t want their innocence and optimism to be collateral damage in the process.
I think what the question really boils down to is—what do I believe to be true? If I allow the ugly things of this world to fill me with cynicism and bitterness, only to turn around and spin a narrative for my children I don’t ascribe to, then my approach is dishonest and damaging.
In the same vein, to deny that our world is in disarray, that evil and darkness exist altogether is to create a glass illusion waiting to be shattered.
But to choose to fight for kindness in a world overrun with poisonous words, to choose to see beauty where brokenness once sat, to be a helper who does not overlook the hurting to spare one’s own negative emotions—to roll up one’s sleeves and get messy for the purpose of making meaning out of the madness, to be a listener who mourns with those who mourn, to collect moments of goodness and to fight for gratitude the way some fight for their voices to be heard, to sing worship songs on a random Tuesday morning, to create safe spaces for others to laugh and share and grow together, to paint pictures and watch sunsets, and pray for the suffering—all of it is holy work that is sure to protect us from becoming both too detached or too in despair.
We are called to be the helpers, the peace-keepers, the hope-bearers, lights in the darkness. Because the light of Christ within us is all that is holding this crumbling world together. We believe in beauty and goodness because we are the vessels through which they exist. And the moment we stop believing, is the moment the light fades completely.
So we weep and we pray and we fight for Truth to win out. We dance and we celebrate the day-to-day and we continue to choose hope. We confess our fears and work for reconciliation amidst differing opinions, refusing to dehumanize the ones we disagree with. We love like Jesus loved, albeit wildly imperfectly, and we are honest about our own shortcomings. We don’t shut our eyes to the things that scare us or make us uncomfortable, but refuse to be defined by our hurts as we both long for Heaven and work to bring it a little bit closer each day.
Maybe that is what we tell them.