I feel guilty of hoping for that “yes” every single time- because I know so many others are not so lucky. And as a mom of a young child with type 1 diabetes, I am acutely aware of the added danger he faces in a potential violent situation. In kindergarten my son experienced his first lockdown drill just a few days into the school year and what happened broke my heart. As the teachers turned out the lights and gave the children instructions, my son’s continuous glucose monitor began to alarm. He was having a dangerous low blood sugar in the middle of an active shooter drill. He described to me what it was like to quietly sit under a window in the dark while eating his gummies under his mask- after all, it was the height of the delta variant of covid 19. As the minutes slowly passed, he hid his monitor under his shirt and attempted to muffle the sounds. My heart sank as I realized, I forgot to teach him how to turn off the volume. He told me that he was panicked, and worried that if there really was an active shooter, he would be the one to ruin it for everyone because he was the one making the noise. What an enormous weight for a kindergartener with a complicated diagnosis to carry.

That afternoon, he cried in my arms. “I tried so hard mommy. There were just so many ways to try to stay alive. I tried so hard.” And he was right. Between diabetes, a pandemic (we were in the middle of a surge in 2021), and now a potential active shooter, there were just too many ways to try to stay alive for one little kindergarten boy. And that was only a drill.

During the drill, the school nurse (who is amazing by the way) watched him closely from outside his classroom door. We texted each other back and forth and waited for it all to end. She went in when she was able to, once she did, relief flooded me. The policy for schools is when the students are practicing or engaging in a lockdown situation- the door stays shut. Even if a young child is experiencing a medical emergency- the door still stays shut. The school did everything it was supposed to. I would also like to add that we love our school. They are incredible partners and the whole place feels like such a loving and welcoming community. But the afternoon after my son graduated from kindergarten was the Uvalde massacre. And I confess I could not bring myself to send my children for the last two days of school that year. I kept them all at home. Not because I was irrational or scared- but because as a parent, sometimes this is all too much.

Whether you are a parent of a medically marginalized child like I am, or just a parent of a healthy school aged child researching bullet proof backpack liners and GPS watches, I just want you to know that I see you. I am you. You are not alone.

I am not sure how exactly I will gain the strength to send my kids back to school, but I will. And I will pray, and cry, and surely round the block occasionally to ease my anxious thoughts. Because when you love someone, you do everything you can to champion their flourishing and keep them safe. I hope as we start the year with a range of emotions and a range of experiences that we can see each other’s humanity- really see each other. I daydream about the day when our school yards are once again unarmed, and our children can laugh and play without looking over their shoulders. I am praying for the day where these kids change the world for the better- because I am convinced that at this point, they are the only ones who can. I will be cheering them on and doing everything in my power to keep them alive in the meantime.

The collective grief and trauma is compounded for many of us. It doesn’t feel right to normalize it, but here we are. Another Uber Eats gift card. Another prayer request. Another casserole. Another bouquet of condolence flowers. None of it feels like enough.

Today as I write this, I’m doing something else I’ve normalized. Today, my 9-year-old is getting her 11th MRI. She was born with a rare form of spina bifida and has lived with a cone-shaped tumor called a syrinx tangled in her spinal cord nerves for her whole life. She is disabled. So here I am, tuning out the ridiculously loud hum of this ominous-looking machine encapsulating my child. I’m pretending it’s totally normal that she’s lying there with weights on her legs, watching Ice Age through a mirror.

But every once in a while, a thought will cross my mind, and my eyes will notice something- and tears come out of nowhere. I swear they weren’t there just a minute ago. I swear I was fine. But am I? Ever so often, she will break eye contact with the movie and look at me, so I try to make sure I’m smiling. I mouth encouragement with my lips to stay still while the doctors get the pictures they need. I give a thumbs up and a silent clap. I pretend I’m brushing hair out of my eyes instead of wiping away tears.

This is what it’s like to live with caregiver trauma every day. This is what it’s like to have to normalize living in a way that’s not sustainable long term—fighting through a million of those invisible moments, over and over. As my tears fell, I wondered what my daughter’s future would look like, and I felt the bitterness creep back in. It’s a constant battle to reject anger and trade it for mercy. For humility. For love. Sometimes I’m more successful than others.

As I sat in that MRI room, I remembered a day a few weeks earlier. On the way home from school, my 8-year-old with asthma asked out of the blue, “I know we wear masks to protect other people because we love people, but when someone doesn’t wear a mask around me, does it mean they don’t love me?” Again, she’s 8. And those words broke my heart.

Caroline has been hospitalized in the PICU multiple times over the last two years for asthma-related complications. Part of me wants to say yes because I have wondered the same thing. But as a parent, I know I can’t say that. And as my child sat waiting for my response, I had to figure out why really fast. So we talked about how Christ on the cross suffered after doing nothing wrong. We talked about how he prayed to forgive the people that put him there because “they knew not what they did.” We wondered about the crucifixion out loud together. Those people knew they were mocking and murdering Jesus as well as the robbers flanking him, but he forgave them still.

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It occurred to me that maybe Jesus wasn’t suggesting that He was the exception, as in “forgive them, Father, for murdering me.” “Forgive them for they know not what they do” is actually very different. To this day, theologians and scholars still debate what actually happened on the cross. Maybe this is because the mystery of Christ on the cross is still much more radical and powerful than any of us could ever fully wrap our brains around. What if Jesus was asking his Heavenly Father to forgive how humanity’s obsession with murder, power, and violence had led him to that moment? What if Christ’s forgiveness is much larger than we could ever possibly imagine? What if his grace is? What if ours could be too?

So as my daughter and I pulled into the driveway, I reminded my child how fully loved she is. I reminded her how spreading love, forgiveness, and grace when it is hard is exactly how Jesus chose to reveal his authority and mercy on the cross. So even when we feel unloved, we choose to forgive and extend mercy anyway, like Jesus.

Caring for medically fragile children in a pandemic is at times an invisible load. Often we’ve had to minimize it greatly for the comfort of many of our healthier and more able-bodied friends. Just like so often, the experiences of BIPOC people are systematically erased in favor of a white narrative; the experience of medically fragile families and image-bearers with disabilities has largely been forced to the margins too.

When I think about the church leaders that have regularly boasted about how they disdain mask-wearing, distrust doctors, oppose health care reform, and refuse vaccines that will keep their most vulnerable congregants safe, I think about how unwelcoming places like that have been to families like mine. If these sanctuaries refuse to prioritize belonging for the least among us, then where do the least of these among us find sanctuary? Does a consistent pro-life ethic include the vulnerable in our midst? How much does the sanctity of their lives matter?

Our family has been blessed to be a part of churches that partner with us so well. They go out of their way to show our kids love in many thoughtful and intentional ways. They listen. They join us in solidarity. They truly care. But largely, when I talk to other parents of disabled children and adults with disabilities, their experience isn’t like mine. Those families are regularly excluded, overlooked, and ignored in many evangelical circles.

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Church institutions will cite their insurance policies as the reason they can’t accommodate a child with a particular disability in their upscale environment. Volunteers will feel inconvenienced and scared of liability. So then who will invite that child into belonging? Who will invite that parent? Or do we find ourselves standing as gatekeepers between medically fragile families and the table of Jesus?

Thankfully this is never the case as Jesus is always on the other side with the vulnerable – but that’s a sobering reminder as well. Exactly what kind of table are the gatekeepers protecting? And who will show up to make that child feel safe and that family feel seen?

The church has had a unique opportunity in the pandemic to participate in the grand reversal as it relates to children with disabilities. One of the simplest ways to participate is to simply join disabled families in friendship, advocacy, and the everyday work of bearing one another’s burdens.

I’m not talking about inspiration porn. I’m talking about friendship, belonging, and interdependent community. As a church, throughout this pandemic, how did we measure up? If we asked our disabled, chronically ill, and caregiving neighbors, would they feel safe enough to even tell us the truth? Would they feel safe enough to admit that, at times, the obsession with freedom and individual rights fueled by Christian Nationalism has led them to feel invisible and unloved by the church? Because there are times I don’t feel safe enough to admit that many church leaders’ public positions on healthcare reform, masks, and vaccines, have directly made my family feel unloved by the church institutions they represent.

While the disability experience is not a monolith, by & large caregivers and disabled people are familiar with the feeling of being excluded from environments that seemingly welcome their presence but not their belonging. And I have to wonder if our churches are not fully FOR the least among them first, then who are they really for?

As we continue towards whatever else 2022 holds, may we allow ourselves to be angered at the way medically fragile children have silently endured a different kind of pandemic trauma than their healthy peers. May we repent for all the times our actions and inaction made someone with a disability feel invisible and alone. And may we be willing to change how we pursue the cruciform love of Jesus towards the medically vulnerable so that those image bearers truly know how loved they are.

Today I did what I do most days. I woke up before my children (as if I actually slept), make my way downstairs to pour a cup of coffee and enjoy some quiet time. I like to come down just before the sunrise because there’s nothing more spiritual to me than meeting my maker in the morning as God slows down to paint the sky. 

But lately, there’s been this pit in my stomach. This dread. And recently, I was finally able to confess to God out loud, “Lord, I am dreading the anniversary of January 6th.” 

I grew up in a medium sized southern town and my family attended a prominent Methodist church in the community. I knew all of the rules. I followed most of them, but I was a fairly quiet kid who battled anxiety for most of my childhood. As I grew up, my anxiety grew too. We called it perfectionism and a hard work ethic back then. 

As a teenager I found myself spiraling spiritually and emotionally until I attempted suicide the week before my 14th birthday. I failed even at that. My parents did the best they could, but mental illness isn’t something that was acknowledged by my circles back then. So their response was to rip me out of public school and enroll me in several conservative Christian homeschool groups. 

In a post 9/11 world, these groups offered a sense of belonging and purpose. There was a huge focus on defending the faith. But, I confess, I didn’t really know Jesus then. So, I’m not exactly sure what I was defending. Our group was the go-to group of “junior republicans”  to help on republican election campaigns, canvas neighborhoods, march in parades with candidates, and work the polls on Election Day. We couldn’t vote yet, but we sure could expedite any future plans to rise in the republican ranks. Our group traveled to Washington for CPAC and prayer breakfasts. We often paged at the Georgia state Capitol. We did all of these things in the name of God and country. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being thoroughly discipled in Christian Nationalism: the idolatrous entangling of God and country for the sake of power. 

So fast forward a couple decades to 2020. My husband is Black, and we have four amazing nonwhite children. And as the world began to experience this collective racial reckoning in the middle of a global pandemic, I too realized that there is so much I had to learn—and unlearn. 

As tensions heightened with the election and prominent evangelicals became consumed with conspiracy theories, I began to question the foundation that was laid so many decades before, and I lamented over the roots. 

You see, my family wasn’t just southern, evangelical, and republican, but our lineage descended directly from confederate soldiers. In Heard County, Georgia, the biggest memorial of anyone in my family is of Hezekiah Almon, confederate soldier. My husbands parents are pastors in a rural Black church in North Carolina, but they descended from enslaved people. Probably one of the most painful experiences as a parent is doing one of those family tree assignments with your kids when their genealogy is either unknown or shameful. In our case, it was both. 2020 was the year I had to look my young daughters in the eye and communicate that a side of their lineage is unknown because of slavery. And a side includes people who were fighting to keep people like them enslaved.

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Pretending that these details don’t affect our theology and the way we see each other is wholly unhelpful, and the only posture that feels honest is one of humility and repentance. Am I responsible for the sins of my ancestors? No. But I am responsible for mine. I’m responsible for all of the times I was and still at times am complicit in this systemic sin. But because I love God and my husband and children, there is nothing I won’t do to work towards healing and repair for our family. Because I love God, I know that racism and nationalism are evil and contrary to the kingdom of God. Because I love my home, I can say January 6th wrecked me to the core. And because I know hope in Christ, I take comfort that he will get the last word—because he is the Word. 

That day I stood in the kitchen, stirring a pot of chili, and watched the attack unfold in real time. I hid tears from my children as they played and read books on the living room floor while the TV above the fireplace showed the smoke covering the Capitol. As I thought of all the times that I visited that building and worked so hard to advance republican politics, I felt so ashamed. I never had the stomach to vote for Donald Trump, but I was still ashamed even for my small contribution to the rise of the Religious Right. There were thousands of kids just like me. There still are. 

As I sip my coffee this morning and count down the days on the calendar as we approach the one-year anniversary, I mostly grieve for my evangelical siblings that are wholly unwilling to search their hearts and see if there is any wicked way within them like our faith leads us to. Because when I searched mine, I found wickedness. I still find it sometimes. Rooting out the sickness of sin isn’t a practice of degrading ourselves, but it’s freeing ourselves towards the magnificent love of Jesus. Our faith leads us to lay down our crosses, not pick up torches or guns or flags. Our faith leads us to wage peace, not covet power and influence. Our faith leads us towards family, community, and belonging. Our faith leads us towards an otherworldly, upside-down kin-dom where the last and least are first. And as empires rise and empires fall, we would do well to remember that our patriotic anthems do not get us any extra points with Jesus of Nazareth. 

When we are ultimately judged by a God who made us and loves us, we will give an account for how and who we loved. This is why I repent for all the years that I thought God needed a republican president to do God’s will. I repent for all the years I centered America and Americanism. I repent for all the years I weaponized Jesus and the Bible for political and personal gain. I repent for how my focus towards political power distracted me from seeing and centering the marginalized all over the world that God so loves. 

As I curl up next to the fire with my children, I have hope. God has gifted our family this living picture of what holy restoration looks like and it is so beautiful. Regardless of power or politics or whatever happens in the future in America, I know my children will be armed with love, capable of waging peace and reconciliation, and invited to be led on an unexpected adventure towards the upside down kingdom of heaven by Hope incarnate.