Taking Some Time

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These past few weeks—these past few days—have been dark.

We all know what’s been happening in the news. A mass shooting of innocent people. The murder of a young girl at her own concert. An arrest of a man with weapons intending to kill a community celebrating their pride. A toddler dragged by an alligator into the water to his death—at the happiest place on Earth.

It feels like the world is losing all of its happy places.

Politicians are arguing about gun control and public safety. There’s been a call for a ban of a group of people no more associated with terrorism than I am associated with the church who believed God sent the shooter into Pulse nightclub.

Everyone, it seems, is arguing about what it means to have love overcome hate, even though we can all agree that is what our world needs.

Yes, in the news and in my own life, these last few weeks have been dark. But I don’t know what it means to make a change. I don’t know how I can show love to my community—I didn’t realize how much I’d been failing them until hatred started seeping out of the cracks of people who’d spent so long biding their time in silence.

Now they’re loud, and they’re carrying weapons.

So for the rest of this month, I’m going to take a break from this blog. Cut back on social media. Stay informed by the news without spiraling into its darkness and coming up hopeless. I’m going to spend more time with my Bible—I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who clings closer to God in the hard times, and now’s my chance.

I’m going to read the Gospels, see how Jesus loved people, and loved them so well. How he put the Pharisees in their place when they condemned those who they didn’t agree with, or didn’t see as holy enough for their temples.

I’m going to spend more time with my people. Listening to them. Encouraging them to get honest about these dark places. I’m going to reach out, and I’m going to find patches of sunshine even through all this June gloom.

When times get dark, that’s all we can really do. Find our patches of light. Try to grow them. Invite people to join us in them.

Stay there, keep holding onto each other's hands.