That moment when you discover your kids know things it’s taken you way too long to know. Things about what’s wrong with the world. Things about what can make the world right again.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
On Wednesday the kids and I set the table for dinner. My wife was at work, and I’d been tied up in video meetings most of the day. As I collapsed into my seat and we joined hands for prayer, I realized it was my first time really seeing them. After we’d said amen, Finnden, our ten-year-old, asked me how my day had been.
My answer was a deep breath and an even deeper sigh. It’s been a fraught week, one full of heartache, and anger, and debate, and exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. Hope exhaustion.
“It was a really hard day,” I finally answered. A few moments passed in silence before I asked them, “How much do you guys know about what’s going on in our country right now?”
“A little,” Finnden answered. “Mommy was telling us today. The police killed a black man.”
“Was it an accident?” asked Ellis, our eight-year-old.
“No,” I answered. “It wasn’t. One of the officers pinned him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s neck. And the man, his name was George Floyd, he couldn’t breathe. But the officer kept his knee on George’s neck for almost nine minutes. That’s not an accident.”
“And now,” she added, “people are protesting. They’re angry.”
“They’re so angry,” I said. “And they’ve a right to be. I’m angry.”
“Because it’s wrong,” she said. She’d stopped eating.
“Yes, and because this isn’t the first time this has happened. It keeps… on… happening.”
“When mommy was telling us about it today,” offered Finn, “I remembered a book I just read about Martin Luther King, Jr. A lot of the same things happened back then. Black people getting hurt. Protests. It seems to me like it’s a lot of the same stuff.”
My throat caught. I could only nod. We sat in silence for a few moments, studying the wood grain of the kitchen table while the air conditioning hummed.
Finally, Ona spoke. She just turned five.
“This is a hard thing.”
Her eyes met mine across the table.
“This is a hard thing to stop,” she continued. “We’re going to have to put it in our prayers.”
“Yes,” I answered, “we’re going to have to put it in our prayers. And we’re also going to have to put it in our minds. And we’re going to have to put it in our hearts. And we’re going to have to put it in our hands. Because one of the ways God answers prayers like this is by using us.”