Love Action Plan

My passion is to make women feel lovely… truly lovely from the inside out. It’s not some conjured marketing ploy, it’s the very core of my being.  The raising up of strong women is so critically necessary.  Lately, however, it seems presumptuous.  How can I inspire loveliness when so many are filled to the brim with fear? Friends not sleeping until their police husbands return safely home.  Friends with children receiving hate because of their parent’s choice of candidate.  A world posting, sharing, spewing fear and hate on a daily basis. Fresh anxieties cropping.  Fear and hate stacking, compounding.

It’s overwhelming and when I feel overwhelmed, I pray.  So I sit each morning, before the sun rises and I pray for myself, then moving outward, upward I pray for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my town, my state, my nation, then the world. I have a big God, so I pray big prayers and he does extraordinary things. But then I rise and keep silent. God doesn’t need my help, but telling myself and my family to keep quiet, keep your nose down and don’t respond to hate and fear doesn’t seem right, either.

If every difference-maker kept silent, only the angry and fear-filled would be represented.

So I choose to speak.

I was not sold on either candidate…in my mind I chose the one that aligned more with my concerns.Those concerns tipped the scale every so slightly in one direction. My concerns may be different than others but doesn’t make me an uneducated white racist.  My vote doesn’t mean that I want someone to come and take away your Hispanic baby, remove your health insurance, send you to another country, or take away your house. It doesn’t mean I have low respect for women, quite the contrary. Deleting friends doesn't make them or the issues go away, it just decreases the size of your bubble. I've watched safely from behind a keyboard as friend after friend emerges to debate and defend only to watch them be swallowed alive. I'm not here to debate, only to tell you how I plan to move forward. I don’t know if things will get better, but I have a Hope that doesn’t rest on government, certainly not on social media, my community, or even my self.  My hope rests a bit higher. I choose Love. Not the pay-for-Starbucks kinda love, a bigger, better Love. Here's my Love Action Plan:

1)      To believe nothing of what I hear (or read) and only half of what I see, I will train myself to filter, research, question everything. I will not perpetuate fear/hate so if I haven’t researched it fully, I will not share it with the world.

2)      To raise educated children that treat others with respect, defend the defenseless and know without a doubt that they are fully loved.

3)      To become visible in the community, battling the negative and showing the world that those who choose to spew hate and fear do not represent the whole.

4)      Continue to encourage, lift-up, and listen to every single woman I am blessed to encounter each day by being intentional and transparent.

5)      Continue to pray… perhaps encouraging others to do the same.

This world seems soon to unhinge.  It would be much easier to stay comfortable believing everything will be okay but doing nothing. So this house chooses Love…we will continue to treat every soul we meet with absolute love regardless of bumper sticker or yard sign, regardless of skin color, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of religion and I will watch with eager anticipation how my prayers will show up in extraordinary ways.