The Overflow: This Difficult Lens (My Brother's Keeper)

This difficult lens is the one I'm looking through. It won't necessarily make you more comfortable, more hopeful, more sure - this raw glimpse at the wrestlings in me - but I don't believe it is for nothing. I don't believe this wrestling is fruitless or hopeless even if at this moment it causes hurt or a struggle. Lean in with me, if you will take a moment to try, to put on this lens I am still trying to understand myself:

There are bombs falling in Syria. I read the truth of it late one night, illuminated with a million other everyday stories on social media and yet it screamed out to me, hit me hard. War is currently worse than it's ever been in this torn-up place and my heart aches because I have seen what a war torn place can be left to face. The tears well up hot.

The world keeps spinning and the warmth of my coffee is stark against the scene outside the window, passersby all bundled as March announces itself boldly, in like a lion. And the whole thing seems like a joke; how in the quiet of snowfall and the clamor of a coffee shop - and a disorienting constant silent screaming as my nation's loudest voices seem to be always now asking Am I my brother's keeper? - how there are bombs falling and parents dying and tiny bellies swallowing cardboard for dinner in Syria. My mind drifts.

A few nights ago my husband and I ventured (for the millionth time? must be!) up those now familiar narrow stars into a small home we should never really feel at home in, to share what shouldn't really belong to us with friends who shouldn't really call us family - but they do - and we are. We sat in a crowded room, ignoring the TV, eating foreign-to-us food off a beautiful setup on the floor with laughter and teasing and joy and three families feeling like they belong. This safe space that so often forces us into new territory holds hearts that carry mine around as if we've always crammed into this drafty apartment and shared broken english and coloring book pages - and nearly every week I look at these beautiful faces and wonder How did we get here?

I remember.

...

I remember that chilly December day, over a year ago now, discovering this staircase for the first time. Up, up, to an unfamiliar family room where we had no idea who we'd meet. We knew one name - the woman of the house (a title so befitting, deeper than we could have known then), who wanted to know English better. We knew they were from Afghanistan, displaced to eventually be resettled twenty minutes from our home, and she had relatives. I hoped for kids to play with.

I remember meeting S, bright and bold and kind; so helpful, and hopeful, welcoming us immediately as her mother and aunt brought in treat after treat before we could even speak. I remember quiet little Z, wrapped in a blanket peering out behind her mother, hardly brave enough to dare offering a smile, and her sister F literally only willing to peek once from around a corner before ducking back out of sight. I remember spelling each name carefully on a scrap of paper, an effort to remember this new family: a mom, dad, aunt, and three daughters, one a set of twins. I remember the thrill of writing the alphabet together before we left, and beaming as Pete and I chatted wildly in the car on the ride home, so excited. What would this become? We had no idea. If we had only known!

If we had only known then how shy smiles would so quickly give way to huge hugs and belly laughs, nail painting, raw stories, huge parties, late nights, and oh so much learning together. If we had only known weekly lessons would grow into shared meals, always tea, homework help, shopping trips, fashion shows, movie nights, cooking lessons, awkward moments, ice skating, walks to the park, and tag playing. If we could have imagined the bridges to be built as our families met and carved out memories with this new family (quickly becoming our third family) or how they'd insist on calling us "sister," "brother," "aunt," "uncle." If we only knew how our pantry, our habits, our bookshelves, our priorities, our prayers, our thoughts, our hearts, our entires lives were about to change... we probably would have stayed longer that morning!

...

Sitting around this Afghan meal, filled with lamb, rice, chicken, and veggies, talking sports and future, laughing and joking about the size of our appetites compared to our waistbands, feeling so at ease in a situation which may have once seemed like stepping into another world - we have found ourselves a home here, embracing the unfamiliar. We find ourselves having been given the most incredible gifts in knowing this broader definition of family and the world and loving our neighbor.

I looked into little eight year old faces squeezed in beside me, and this growing thirteen year old girl who is going to change the world. They choose random moments each visit to surprise us with reminders that we're cared for. I try to do the same, because I feel it with all of me. I wonder if they notice how often I stare at their faces and literally whisper a silent Thank You to God - for keeping them safe - for bringing them here alive and together and so whole that we might know them and love them. At dinner Z insisted that I save (or really, protect) the spot next to me. She chatted about how she has my back if I got full and advised me not to clear my plate too early or they would try to fill it up again so fast but don't worry she would grab it right away and run! Meanwhile F reassured me that I should eat up so that I grow muscles and get strong, her mom just doesn't want me to be too skinny. This family who looks out for us, who surprises us with hugs and unassuming affection when we most need it and least expect it - "Miss Katie, I just really like you a lot. Like you are my own Aunt" - they have captured my heart. They remind me the beautiful simplicities woven into childhood, and every once in a while the complexities of the country and past they love but had to flee.

And it is their precious faces I see - flashing through my mind with the thought each day for the past few weeks - as there are bombs falling in Syria. Because there are families in the path of war right now - children who laugh like sweet Z and F and have dreams like wise S. There are strong, smart, brave and incredible parents like this family dying, devastated, starving. How do I move forward moment by deceivingly calm moment? How do I not? What can I even do?

What do you do with yourself when every face of every person facing or fleeing war, pain, and poverty begins to look human to you - familiar to you? Each story is unique and individual, each background and culture will vary in its striking and stunning diversity - but each person represents the same thing: an image-bearer. Distinctly and intrinsically valued by God and therefore by me - by us - as fellow humans. I am my brother's, my sister's keeper. The pages of God's Word breathed to life leave no room for doubt: I exist to lay my life down, in the breathtaking example of Jesus life, this God-Man I call Savior who lived to be poured out and fully given away. And so my heart breaks the same as if these faces on twitter feeds and news articles are not just familiar, but family. Tears fall at the images scrolling because I see pieces of ourselves suffering where ever there is suffering. We are not separate, we belong to each other.

The weight of it hangs heavy and I cannot, will not, turn away. I have no real answers but my Father holds it all so I know where to turn with my weeping heart and this difficult lens He is giving me. I can do small things. And if I have to keep walking around leaking for a while (or even until all things are made new?), I will. Because I believe in not shying away when it hurts. Because God chose to step into my brokenness so I can step into broken places with my brave broken heart. Because there are girls who need to know they are worthy of self-sacrificing love in Sierra Leone, and there are refugees who I hope hear: you are wanted here when they arrive in Buffalo, and there are bombs falling in Syria. Today.

And it matters to me.

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth [citizenship] of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:12-13