All Is Grace

i have lots of words in my head. thoughts and thoughts and thoughts. all of the hard thoughts. angry thoughts and irritated thoughts and i promise there is love inside there too, but oh. my. GOSH.

i’ve had it.

it’s days like today when i look around and see all of the controversy and the publicity stunts and the media frenzy and the arguing on facebook and the back and forth of my friends with their strong opinions and their knowledge and their experience and their quoting all the quotes and i want to sign off social media FOREVER.

i’m sick of memes. i’m sick of pictures of dead bodies and dead babies and fleeing Syrians and bombed sites and downed planes and and videos of gunshots and graphs about Nazis and Germans and Russians and Muslims. i’m sick of the politicking and the excuses being made and the lack of mention of the murdered Kenyans and the murdered citizens of Beirut and the raped and beheaded Coptic Christians and the downright refusal to acknowledge extremism and it’s actual existence. i’m sick of the talk of refugees and how we should save all of them and all of that in the same moment we don’t want to talk about how many of our freaking VETERANS OF THE WARS WE’RE FIGHTING AGAINST RADICAL TERRORISTS are starving and freezing and mentally and emotionally and physically wrecked.

and i don’t know what i believe or what Jesus would do or what our country should do or anybody else’s country for that matter, and i don’t even know how to feel about any of this craziness and i sign off social media at least for today.

i don’t know how compassion for people fits with shipping refugees into our country or not. i don’t know how our 18 trillion dollar national debt could possibly allow us to provide those refugees with what they need to get started so they can live their lives here. i don’t know how i’m going to spend the next 24 years paying off my student loan that’s only $13,000 and still give my kids a Christmas. i don’t know how i’m going to pay all of my bills next week.

i do know that God is watching. but i DON’T know what he’s doing. or what he wants us to do. i just don’t know.

but i DO know that i’m exhausted with the infighting and the media hype and the constant ranting. i DO know this is about things that are WRONG–ideology, religion, immorality, whatever it is that causes anyone to think that human life is disposable, it’s wrong. i don’t care if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, Atheist, or other. I don’t care. if you think someone should die for their beliefs, you are wrong. if you are willing to kill for that belief, you are wrong. life is precious. people are precious. love them.

and how do we deal with the people willing to kill for that belief?

i don’t know that either.

i just don’t know.