NOTE: I filmed a video of this same post and it is at the bottom of the post for those who prefer listening over reading.
Can we all agree that 2020 has been the longest 25 years EV-UHHHH?
January brought in a new year and decade. February was well, just February, but then, sweet mercy, March roared in like a lion and brought the coronavirus pandemic with it. March, April, and May felt like being on a roller coaster named Death by Isolation. The end of May offered hope that life would return to some type of normal, but then the news brought horrifying video of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man who was begging for air. George Floyd died and the issue of racism was front and center for America again. Dear God, help us!
Sometimes, life these days feels like being dropped out of an airplane at 35,000 feet without a parachute. My goal in this post is…..well, I’m not sure what it is other than to process through a few things with you, my friends, and ask you to do some heart work. Some of you will react like I would have and stop reading right here, because you do not believe that racism is something about which you need to be concerned. Others of you have lived the thing and been mistreated or seen family and friends mistreated because of it. I hope all of you will stay with me.
All I’m going to say about Coronavirus is that it is with us until a vaccine or a cure is created, so we might as well go back to as normal a life as possible and learn to live with it. I know, I know…that is a hard, cold assessment, but it is the truth. Neither our emotional stability or our economy can withstand any more stay-at home orders.
Now, on to an issue that I never, in a million, zillion years anticipated addressing in this space, but here we are. If you had asked me two weeks ago if I was racist, I would have told you ‘absolutely not’, and would have been offended that you even asked the question. In spite of the fact that I was born in, and grew up in, an all-white county and town in the South in the mid-1960s through 1984-ish, I would not have thought of myself as racist, or even someone who should or would address the topic. You know, it was not my problem! Then, George Floyd gasped his last breath of earthly air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Dear God, help me!
At first, I did not watch the video. Then, my friend, Karen, sweetly challenged me to consider if I had blind spots concerning racism in my heart. At the time, she did not know she was issuing a throw-down, but God did. I watched the video and was sickened. I spent most of the rest of the day either sitting on the couch or walking around in a daze. The man was murdered in cold blood because he used a lousy counterfeit bill? The way Floyd died was the way you kill a snake or other animal. Not the way a human being should EVER die. I wanted to scream! I wanted to un-see the video! I did not want this to be my problem, but it was, and it is.
And it is your problem, too, regardless of whether you ever own it or not.
I like to keep posts to around 600 words, so I am going to send this one out and come back in a few days (maybe next Friday or maybe sooner) with the continuation. I am excited to share with you what God has been up to on this subject.
What are you thinking? Are you nodding your head in agreement, or are you rushing to hit the delete/unfriend/unfollow button? Do whatever you need to, friend, but one day we will all answer to God for what we did about the ugliness of racism. I’ll see you back here soon.
SDG/FCA!!
