#itsnotaboutyou

I’ve been trying to figure out why this hurts my heart so bad. I mean I know why, but to put it into words. Then I though of my childhood. I had been looking at pictures from high school and my friends (names changed) Kim and Kyle. Well now they are grown, just like me. Kyle is a tall African American men who happens also to be a father, husband, brother and son. He is a kind, gentle, loving Christian man. I have seen him laugh until he couldn’t breath--laugh, not detained. I have seen tears run down his face...not for injustice but because a joke was so funny or because the Lord touched his hear. If it were Kyle, I would break. If his dear sister Kim’s car was in an accident and her cell phone was dead and she showed up on your porch, what would you do? She is a friend, a sister, an aunt, a daughter. I would fight if someone hurt or shot her simply for seeking help. 

And then I think of my son’s Vice Principal. He is a friend of a few of my coworkers. He has a great laugh, he loves his students. He is forever giving his students the benefit of the doubt and showing them what justice and grace looks like. I love that one of my white son’s male role models is an African American man. If the police kneeled on his neck, thousands of children who he’s touched including my own child would forever hate the people who take an oath to protect them. They would break into a million pieces. 

Next I think of my best friend’s children. All 4 are children of color. Her oldest are twins, like Kim and Kyle, they are not African American, but brown nonetheless and brown in this country is met with fear, rage and so much ignorance. Her son is tall, awkward, and gangly as many teenage boys are, but he is also sweet, funny and so very smart. Her older daughter is a talented singer, a responsible big sister and her Mama’s best friend (I love their relationship). And my best friend’s youngest two. A son and daughter. Brother and sister as well. They are African American and beautiful. He is a ham, he is a love and he is the sweetest little boy. And she is my squeakers. When she was little more than a peanut, she snuggled in the crook of my neck and she stole my heart. Now a year later, she is already smart, snarky and so full of joy. And at such a young age, these beautiful babies are the victim of a broken system. Birth fathers who want nothing to do with them, an addicted birth mother, and his grandmother--afraid a white woman couldn’t raise a black man and teach him what being black in America would me. And the drugs their birth mother used? Left them addicted before birth. He with autistic tendencies he will forever have to overcome, if  he isn’t judged first on the color of his skin or the texture of his hair. They may be judged by the broken background they had no control over. Let me be clear. If my friend doesn’t stop you if you try to hurt her beautiful children. I certainly will. These are the nieces and nephews of my heart. They are the children my son insists are his cousins. Because family isn’t always blood. These babies are my babies.

I may be a white woman in America with so much privilege it is coming out of my eyeballs. I am so lucky I was born with green eyes and light colored stick-straight hair. Not because I like it better or because it makes me better, but because in this country that prides itself on being Christian (Jesus was brown by the way) I’m safe, because of the color of my skin. I’m automatically respected and protected. If I knocked on your door in the middle of the night because I was in an accident, you’d call 911--not for fear of me, but out of concern for me.

My nephew got in trouble with some friends a few years back on the beach. And I didn’t fear for his safety, but I feared for his black best friend’s. And we all thanked God that he had been taking a walk on the beach when his white friends were detained by the police. No one is more dangerous because they are tan. No one’s life is less valuable because of how much melanin is in their skin or where their ancestors came from. That is a lie told to us by the conquerors. The ones who held the bigger weapons. The one who used force to steal what they wanted. The Conquistadors wiped out entire civilizations. The slave traders destroyed families and tribes and villages--ripped apart with oceans in between. The plantation owners and our founders decided humans were property. They decided because they were European and “discovered” this land and I don’t know, believe in God? They could steal everything from the American Indians. Manifest Destiny is a lie. No one is inherently better or worse or deserves “everything.” 

We are all sinners, none are clean. Save by grace, made new because of the blood of a very brown Jewish man two-thousand years ago. So all you white Christians out there who think “merica” is blessed by God, maybe it is, but maybe that’s the biggest lie the devil has told. Because the Jesus of my faith would’ve brought George Floyd back for his glory, would’ve healed the police officer dying of Covid, would have flipped tables in Congress and stood against those using violence again PEACEFUL protesters. My Jesus sees the heart, not the policy, not the 2nd Amendment or the stand on abortion, not the amount of $ in your bank account or the color of your skin. He forgives and condemns based on your grace for others, on the purity of your intent, and the magnitude of your regret for the wrongs you’ve committed. No one group of people own Him. No one has exclusive rights to being blessed by Him. He was with George Floyd and Trayvon Martin and everyone else who lost their lives for simply having the wrong skin tone. He held their hands and cried for them. He also cried for those that committed those heinous crimes--for their ignorance and hatred--that the devil whispered in His children’s ears and they listened.