Deep breath. Eyes squeezed shut. Tapping my cell phone lightly against my forehead trying to summon the right words from somewhere before I dial the numbers. When he answers my call, the only words I manage to slap together are these:
“We love you… so much. You can do this.”
I’m convinced that my message on this earth for people to deliberately and intentionally put themselves in close proximity to the suffering of others will never be embraced – precisely because of moments like these…
…when you’re a Hope Giver and you know what you have to do – but you yourself are so devastated. You can’t even breathe for all the grief.
My readers know Pastor Dean Sanner from Juxtaposed. He’s the one who married Sean-Martin and me. He’s the one who helped me bury my sister. He’s the one who taught me what it means to be a Hope Giver. Now he’s showing me again, today, how it’s done even though he readily admits:
“It hasn’t been the most stellar week…”
Two North Las Vegas police officers, Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, were murdered as they ate lunch at a CiCi’s Pizza by a married couple who held to extremist, anti-government sentiments which caused them to take the lives of these public servants along with another man who tried to derail their plans of a “revolution”. As the chaplain for the North Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Dean knew
both of these officers personally. He’d done ride-alongs with them. Befriended them. Cared very much for them. And now he had to bury them and bring comfort to their grieving families.
What do I do to encourage this man whose fingerprints are all over my own life and spiritual formation? Who has been a Hope Giver to me when I have been in utter despair? How can I point my finger toward tomorrow, knowing he has to walk into this gut-wrenching funeral and beckon him to go… do what he is needed to do… while I know full well the pain and misery that he carries as he goes? My initial response is to pull him back from it. Ask God to send somebody else – someone whose name I don’t know, someone who hasn’t helped make me the woman I am today. Instead I take another breath, grit my teeth, and tell him again:
“You can do this.”
It’s one thing for me to go into the fray that is this life – it’s another to watch my loved ones forge ahead and do the same. It is one thing for me to stand on the platform I’ve built and tell the masses that they should be Hope Givers; that they should deliberately and intentionally put themselves in close proximity with the suffering of others – those whose names I don’t know. Those I’ve not met personally. There is a part of me – a big part of me – that doesn’t want my Deans or my Hollys to dive into the melee. I don’t want to sit in the fox holes with them. It’s not like victories are a sure thing regardless of what we hear from the pulpit on any given Sunday or sing about during the worship time. I know what it’s like to lose. I know what it’s like to be the one to come out bleeding. I’d rather sit in the fox holes with perfect strangers. It is much easier to share in the suffering of such a one, but to share in the suffering of those in my inner circle who have chosen to share in the sufferings of others… there are no words.
These are my confessions.
So, although it feels more like swallowing glass than encouraging my loved ones to be Hope Givers, I want everyone out there to know — whether I know your name or not, whether you are in my inner circle or not:
You can do this.
As heart-slicingly grueling it is to say this to everyone in my life, you can be a Hope Giver. You can – and the Kingdom needs you to – deliberately and intentionally put yourself in close proximity to the suffering of others and bring hope, redemption, and healing to people in impossible circumstances.
You won’t always win.
(Don’t believe anybody who tells you any differently.)
You will get hurt.
(They don’t call this place “earth” for nothing.)
Evil will not lie placidly silent while you penetrate the darkness with light.
(Nor should you lie placidly while evil runs amok.)
But you will also see miracles.
(You will be the miracles people need.)
You will change the trajectory of other people’s lives.
(You will change the trajectory of your own.)
It’s no joke out there, folks. So hold on tightly to Jesus’s words:
“In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart:
I have overcome the world.”
Daisy Rain Martin is editor in chief for RAIN Magazine. She is also the author of Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside and If It’s Happened to You, which can both be found on her website. Look for Hopegivers: Hope is Here in 2015.
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