Tough Conversations Part 1: Privilege and Love

Image credit: Edward Fielding (fineartamerica.com)

Not too long ago, Emelyn and I read a graphic novel by Patricia Palacio called White Bird. The story follows a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust who is forced to hide in a barn in order to survive, and the family that sacrifices their own safety to protect her. It's a beautiful story of ordinary people doing heroic things. At the end of the novel, there are two pages of panels that connect the immigration crisis at our southern borders to the main story line. Some people may get upset that Palacio draws parallels between these two events in history. How can we call them the same thing? Wisely, my thirteen year old daughter thought this through. And this was her conclusion:

They're not the same thing, Mom, but they are. That's the whole point. There's so much disagreement about policies and whose side everyone is on, but we forget the most important thing. Immigration is not just a problem to deal with; we have to remember that immigration is people. Maybe if we remembered people instead of politics, the right thing would be done. That's what Hitler did. He turned people into a problem.


Recently, I read Amy Julia Becker's newest book White Picket Fences, a fantastic read about the role privilege plays in perpetuating inequality, racism, and classism in contemporary society. Becker writes about many aspects of white privilege, including her own southern childhood, but her sections about raising her oldest daughter Penny, who has Down syndrome, resonate with my own experiences. 

I've been thinking a lot about privilege these last eight years since Kaleb was born. About all the things I assumed were true of individuals with intellectual disabilities. About how I used to pray that each of my babies would be healthy (read "normal"), because it would be devastating if they weren't. Growing up, my only experience with intellectual disability was what I saw on the show Life Goes On and in the hallways of my high school when the cheerleading coach attempted to lead cheers, while her little guy, who happened to have Down syndrome, ran circles around her. There was also the girl who attended our church who had a developmental delay, and we all adored her. But I also saw how tired her mom was some days. There was nothing bad about any of these experiences, of course. In fact, there was probably a lot more good I could have seen. Instead, I mostly focused on what was difficult, what made me feel uncomfortable. And while I would have said that people with intellectual disabilities were image bearers of God just like me, I didn't necessarily think it was my responsibility to sit at the same table with them. After all, Corky was a character, and in real life, he was an anomaly, the only actor I knew of with Down syndrome on mainstream television. And the cheerleading coach's son? Well, I wasn't on the team, anyway. And he was a wild man! Our friend at church? I truly loved her, but because she was quite a bit younger than me, I didn't go out of my way the other six days of the week.

Distance is precisely what perpetuates the hidden, insidious forces of privilege. Distance is safe. Distance is blissful ignorance. And distance keeps everyone in their same old places, but holds no one responsible for the fact that some of our places are a lot more comfortable than others.

Then my little sister grew a deep passion for East Africa and started sharing her work and her heart with our family. And I could not claim not to know how racism's deep roots spans two continents, an ocean of tears, and at least four hundred years of history.

Then my son was born. And I could not keep disability at arm's length anymore. I couldn't pretend it didn't concern me. Because it did. Deeply. And I was not prepared to fully welcome my beautiful son, because I had no idea the assumptions I harbored until they looked me full in the face. I took those assumptions head on, and I did not like what I saw, what I had carried for so long without knowing. And I saw the damage it did the day he was born and for many days that followed, and that damage nearly broke my heart in two. But you can't stay on "the dirt floor basement of your heart" forever as Barbara Brown Taylor writes. It's no place to live. And there's a God whose grace is big enough to forgive even a humble mama's twisted heart.

Once I knew, I could not stay silent. Once I clapped eyes on my beautiful boy and felt his body in my arms and fed him from my own body and saw myself in the curve of his chin, saw my father in the blue of his eyes, saw my girls in the upturn of his nose and the sound of his laughter, saw my husband in the arch of his forehead and the delicate shape of his ears, I could not stay silent.

Love is hard. It challenges us in ways we could never imagine. It humbles every prideful bone in our bodies. We are never so vulnerable as we are in the face of love. And yet. Love doesn't feel like work. That's what love does. It asks everything of us, even our very lives. We lay them down again and again at the altar of our own desires, at the altar of all that is broken and weary and wants breath, wants life. And yet it never feels like work. Instead, we're born along on its current and in return there is beauty for ashes, a spirit of joy for a burden of heaviness. This beautiful dance of living given lives is what makes us come alive.

I'm so grateful God chose to shake up my life. I'm so grateful our family will never be the same. I'm so grateful for the gift that is sometimes hard but always beautiful, and never ever feels like work I want to set down. True, at the end of some days, I am utterly spent. But every morning I can't wait to put my arms around each of my littles again. I can't wait to keep sharing our story with friends who join us on the journey. Every life has value. Every life is sacred. Yours. Mine. And the person you can't see. Haven't noticed. Because there are invisible lines that keep us separate and make us unseen to each other. And so often misunderstood. But we can cross those old lines. We can. And we must. We can weave new cords that bind us together, that allow us to see ourselves in a stranger's eyes. Advocacy is a privilege and an obligation, both. And imagination is a powerful tool--we must imagine the lives of others if we are to see the invisible lines that keep us apart. We must try to see what has not been visible. And we must not sit idle, waiting for old ways to change without our participation.

What does that look like in your world? Maybe it looks like friendship. Maybe it looks like crossing the street or the proverbial aisle to listen to your neighbor. Maybe it looks like volunteering. Or advocating--shouting the worth of all people regardless of color, class, gender, ability, faith. Maybe it looks like going halfway around the world to build wells or schools. Maybe it looks like writing a check. Or maybe it looks like something that hasn't even been dreamed up yet. It doesn't take a movement. It just takes each one of us doing small acts everyday in our ordinary lives. And all those small acts will add up to something big.

Perhaps the most important question we can ask ourselves is this: Who suffers when someone isn't welcome at the table? Is it the marginalized person? That's what I might have told you eight years ago. That's what motivated our family's initial commitment to advocacy.

Friends, the truth is this: We all suffer. We all lose. We all miss out on the beauty difference makes.

When one is excluded, everyone loses. And that's the Truth. When someone or some group is absent, silenced, repressed, unheard, and marginalized, we who are comfortable miss out on all they could have offered. The ways of seeing and being in the world they could have opened our eyes to, the love and friendship we could have received and given.

Reciprocity. Friendship. Unity. Diversity. Beauty. These are things I want our family's cup to overflow with. We are designed for community. We are made to love. We are called to welcome and to serve. Will we?