Author: Kristin

I find that I think best when I write. If you choose to follow me, you will get a first-hand look at my thoughts as I contemplate life as a woman, wife, mother, daughter, writer, teacher, and follower of Jesus. Issues that seem to recur revolve around parenting, education, equity, chronic illness, and teaching.

Prepared for What’s Next, Changing Course, pt.1

~ Kristin ~ 5 Comments

Six years ago this week, I said goodbye to my classroom in St. Louis. I was depleted and sick, and I was certain that I would never have a classroom again.

I’d been struggling with joint pain, systemic inflammation, and fatigue for a year and half — I had difficulty making it through a school day, let alone driving home at night. When I arrived home, I would plunk on the couch or in my bed and accomplish little else until I had to drag myself back to school the next day.

It was a difficult time. Our family had long been experiencing trauma that began with a drastic change in lifestyle caused by a geographical relocation during which my husband went to grad school and I began teaching full time. Our children entered a totally new culture with inadequate support from their parents who were doing their best to fill the demands of the new roles they had assumed. In the years after that major change, our family felt the first hand effects of bullying, social class disparity, eating disorder, depression, anxiety, and sexual assault. All the while, I just kept producing lesson plans, grading papers, and bringing my best to the classroom day after day after day.

Finally my body had had enough. If I wouldn’t sit down of my own free will and assess the damages, mourn the losses, and begin to soothe the hurts, my body would simply crash. And crash it did.

And when, in the midst of that crash, my husband took a new position in Michigan, my medical team suggested that rather than jump right into something else, I should take six months to rest.

Rest. Period.

So I did. I came here to his little house by the river near the end of a beautiful Michigan summer. I took long walks in the park, read books, watched too much TV, put together puzzles, organized and re-organized, and rested.

I didn’t prepare any lessons or grade any papers, but I did begin to write. It was during that period, six years ago, that I began this blog. In the beginning, I wrote every single day as though my life depended on it. In some ways, it did. I had to reacquaint myself with my internal life, had to start hearing my voice, had to start listening to what was happening in my innermost places.

I wrote about my illness, I wrote about coming back to Michigan, I wrote about loss. Many of my posts were a reflection of a renewed commitment to my faith journey, which had also been relegated to survival mode during what I’ve come to call the soldiering years.

It was my writing that started the healing, and through it I chronicled the other steps I began to take — exercise, dietary changes, building community, therapy, and myriad medical and peri-medical approaches like yoga, massage, and homeopathy. I wrote about the ups and the downs — the days when I felt strong and the days that I crashed. I’ve written about victories and grief, sorrows and joy.

And all the while I’ve been healing, and I’ve been preparing for what’s next.

I’ve often told my children and my students that all of life is preparing you for what’s next. Crawling prepares us for walking; school (at least in theory) prepares us for work. Warm-ups prepare you for exercise; practicing scales prepares you to make music. All of life’s experiences are preparing us for the experiences that are yet to come.

Before we moved to St. Louis, I completed my Master’s degree in English education which prepared me to take the position I held at Lutheran North for nine years. Before I met my husband, who had experienced divorce, I had had my own experience as a child of divorce which gave me empathy and prepared me for my role as a stepmother. God has a way of weaving our life experiences together, like a Master teacher, layering lesson upon lesson so that we are always equipped for what comes next.

* * *

It about killed me to wait six months to find a job, and I will confess that at about month four or five, I took a proofreading job for a guy working on his master’s in education. His research resonated with my heart for equity, and I loved speaking into his ideas. The feedback I got from that small job gave me the confidence to promote myself as a private tutor where I supported students who struggled with English — reading, writing, speaking.

Many of these students were English Language Learners or were raised in two-language homes, so they needed support with the nuances of English grammar. In order to meet their needs, I became much stronger in my ability to articulate the rules of sentence composition, the parts of speech, and the role of punctuation. This came in very handy when I found myself teaching a developmental composition course at Concordia University — a part-time gig — where I helped freshmen become more comfortable with writing paragraphs and essays.

After I’d been tutoring for a while, I randomly found a job posting on Craigslist to be a ‘tutor’ at Lindamood-Bell. That ‘tutoring’ position tutored me. It allowed me to start part-time while I continued to experiment with treatments for what was once called psoriatic arthritis but which I now refer to as ‘unspecified autoimmunity’. It gave me opportunities for advancement when I felt (and even when I didn’t feel) that I was ready. It challenged me, it stretched me, and it reminded me of the mettle within me that carried me through nine years of teaching high school juniors and seniors. By meeting with students one-on-one, by utilizing a variety of online materials and platforms, by writing instructional plans, by following instructional design, by mentoring other instructors, and by supporting my colleagues, I have been prepared for what’s next.

While I was tutoring, then teaching at the university, then working at Lindamood-Bell, my health slowly improved. As is chronicled in this blog, I have found the best health I’ve experienced in years through specific dietary choices, daily yoga and walking, weekly visits alternating between chiropractic care and physical therapy, monthly Hellerwork appointments, and twice yearly pain injections. I’m healthy, strong, and ready for what’s next.

This whole past six years has been preparing me for what’s next — first the pause, then the dabbling in tutoring and adjunct instruction, then a full-time job with ever-increasing responsibility.

So what’s next?

Could it be that God is planning to use everything I’ve been learning over this six year period of healing and growth in a position that is focused on educational equity — my long-time passion? Is God that good?

He’s that good; it’s almost as if He’d had it planned the whole time.

I’ll tell you more about that in my next blog post.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

Finding Common Ground, a re-visit

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

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On Monday, I posted a piece about wearing a face mask during this pandemic. Who could have predicted at the start of this year that such a topic would be polarizing? A simple piece of fabric across the face has come to represent a political position rather than an attempt to stop the spread of disease. We could’ve seen it coming. The piece that follows was written in January of this year, long after many of us had taken our political positions, formed teams, sunk in our heels, and declared war on one another. How long will we allow this go on? How long before we are willing to find some common ground?

January 2020 is the start of a new year and a new decade. It is also a leap year, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, an election year.

It’s been pretty hard not to notice, what with…

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Coronavirus Diary 15: Wearing a Mask

~ Kristin ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been back in the office for two weeks now. I’d been working from my office in our little house by the river for almost three months when our company determined that we should be back in our physical space, so I packed up all my materials — laptop, auxiliary screen, student files, and other materials, and lugged them to my car, drove them across town, hauled them up two flights of stairs, and started to acclimate.

The first couple of days were especially stressful. I don’t know if it was the daily screening paperwork that I had to fill out every morning, the taking of my temperature, the putting away of all those materials (which I still haven’t finished), the spontaneously self-generating list of regular tasks that didn’t pause for a second as I learned all the new protocols, or the fact that I now have to wear a mask.

Of course I’ve been wearing a mask for months. It started in the early days when the only time I left our home was to go to the grocery store. I made a few masks following a simple pattern and using some leftover fabric I had here at home. Our church was making them for a local hospital, and since I have a sewing machine and we suddenly had lots of time on our hands, I began to mass produce them along with a small group of women.

On my weekly treks out, I not only donned a mask, but I wore latex gloves. I carefully procured my groceries, following arrows on the floor and being careful to keep six feet away from others. Back in my car, I would remove the mask and gloves, sanitize my hands, and then drive home where my husband would receive and wash all the items I purchased while I stripped and headed straight to the shower. In fact, we’ve kept this routine all these months. We’ve developed quite a system.

We’ve adopted these behaviors to stay safe — to keep ourselves from getting sick.

In those early days, I probably wore the mask for a grand total of 3-5 hours per week, but now that I’m back in the office, I am supposed to wear it for 8 hours a day!

I get it. Mask wearing is very important. The data shows us that our chances of spreading or contracting Covid-19 are greatly reduced by social distancing and wearing a mask.

So, I’m wearing one, but let me just say that it is challenging!

Probably the biggest reason I find face mask wearing challenging at work is that it covers my face and most of my facial expressions. I am an educator, and right now I see most of my students online. Working with students virtually has its own challenges, not least of which is the ability to communicate clearly. Since all the students can see of me is from the torso up, I am continually checking to be sure that I am centered on the screen, that my student can hear me clearly, and that I am allowing appropriate time to hear his or her response. I rely heavily on facial expression and hand gestures such as “thumbs up” and “high five” to communicate encouragement. Now that I am in the center and required to wear a mask, I lose my smile and the student’s ability to use the visual support of watching my mouth to understand what I am saying. (You’d be surprised how much we rely on this.)

My employer has done a pretty decent job of separating staff members from one another. I am sharing a room with one coworker, but we have a divider between our work spaces and we give each other a wide berth when we are coming and going. Additionally, we each wear a mask for most of the day. However, we have both determined that we will remove our masks when working with our most severe/youngest students for whom the mask seems a distraction or hindrance to instruction.

I am fine with this because my coworker and I have a strong relationship and we are both communicating about the ways in which we are continuing to limit our exposure to others outside of work — avoiding social gatherings, and wearing our masks when in public spaces such as grocery stores, doctor appointments and the like. We trust one another to act responsibly and out of concern for one another, so we feel comfortable several times a day removing our masks to work with these students.

I also dash outside once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and over my lunch hour to take off the mask and breathe some fresh air because I am just tired of wearing it! It fogs up my glasses, makes me feel hot, and smashes my hairstyle.

Wearing a face mask is annoying, but I am going to keep wearing one.

Why? Because in my county 37 new cases were reported yesterday. Michigan’s seven-day average is 508. The United States’ rate of infection and cumulative death count still far outpaces any country, even adjusted for population, and though people are still arguing about whether Covid-19 can be transmitted by people who are asymptomatic (or pre-symptomatic), each day we learn of more people who were infected because they gathered in large groups and chose not to wear masks.

Over 135,000 people have died in United States in the last few months, and we have been given a few simple instructions for diminishing further spread and death: 1) We should wash our hands, 2) we should stay away from people, and 3) we should wear a mask.

It’s really not a big ask.

Is it annoying? Yes.

Would I prefer not to? Yes.

But am I willing to take one for the team and do my best to stop the further spread of the coronavirus while thousands of medical staff are doing their best to keep people alive while wearing not only a mask, but often a shield, and all manner of PPE? while thousands of researchers, clad in hazmat suits, are working around the clock to find a vaccine, a treatment, a cure? Yes.

I’m willing to be a little annoyed — a little uncomfortable — for the sake of keeping myself and others safe. And what if wearing a mask turns out to be ineffective? I won’t mind, because at the very least, my choice to wear a mask signals to those around me that I am willing to care for them, to keep any possible infection to myself, and to join a united effort against this pandemic.

I think that’s worth something.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Romans 12:18

Blessed at the DMV, a re-visit

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

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On Monday I wrote about privilege; this post from December 2014 — way back near the start of this chapter — talks about privilege, too. Throughout my life I have considered myself to be blessed — to have abundance because of the generosity of God. I will render to God the praise that is God’s, but I will also acknowledge that I have privilege because I am white and Christian in a country that has historically benefitted white Christian people at the expense of others.

I am writing late today, and as I sit at my desk, the sun is setting over the river. I can see it right out my window. It. is. gorgeous.

Today was a pretty bleak day weather-wise — cold and gray –and the task on the to-do list was also pretty bleak: a trip to the Secretary of State’s office — the DMV.

If…

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Coronavirus Diary 14: Privilege

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

It’s a beautiful Michigan summer morning, and as I sit behind our home with a view of the woods — thick with bunnies and squirrels and deer and such — I can almost ignore the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, that thousands continue to protest racial violence and inequity across the nation.

I made myself a cup of tea and walked right outside, mindless of the fact that over 2 million in our nation are incarcerated — over 500,000 of whom who have not yet been convicted but are merely awaiting trial (Prison Policy Initiative) — and can’t escape their cells, let alone take a leisurely stroll out the door to enjoy some fresh air.

Back here, next to my lush garden from which I pick lettuce and kale each evening for my dinner salad, I can forget that 1 in 5 households with children aged 12 and under are experiencing food insecurity right now (Brookings).

Sitting in my air conditioned home by the river in the middle of a summer heat wave, I can forget that latest estimates (prior to Covid-19) suggest over 8,000 people were homeless in Michigan alone (United States Interagency Council on Homelessness) with well over half a million nation-wide.

This is what privilege looks like: me, sitting in my backyard on a Sunday morning, having the time to type words on my MacBook Air, listening to the birds, admiring my garden, virtually immune to harm.

Privilege looks like a refrigerator and freezer full of more food than my husband and I can eat in a week, a stockpile of pantry items, and enough toilet paper for the next two months.

Privilege looks like both of us having jobs that we enjoy doing, never having missed a day due to the pandemic, never having missed a paycheck.

Privilege looks like closets and drawers full of clothing and the ability to donate the items we are tired of, that no longer fit, that have a stain we can’t remove, that we never liked in the first place.

Privilege looks like discussions over whether or not we want to run out and pick up a gas grill one day this week, if it’s time we purchased a new car, if we want to get dinner from a restaurant or make it here at home.

Privilege looks like both of us having all the medications we need, the insurance to cover the majority of our medical costs, and high quality practitioners who we are able to see often the same day we call.

Privilege looks like watching Hamilton on Disney + on Friday night, scrolling through home improvement shows on TLC on Saturday afternoon, and bingeing on Netflix on Sunday night.

Privilege looks like a quick stop at Whole Foods on the way home from church, a dash into the library to grab the books I reserved online, and a Zoom call with the family.

Why do I have all of this privilege? Why am I so fortunate? I haven’t made all the right choices. I haven’t utilized all of my resources. I haven’t done my best and worked my hardest.

Sure, I went to school. I got good grades. I’ve pursued jobs in my field. I’ve been a mostly honest, law-abiding citizen. However, I have broken speeding laws, I’ve lied to my friends, I’ve parked in no parking zones, I’ve used work time for personal business, I’ve yelled at my kids and spanked them too hard. I’ve shot off my mouth more times than I care to admit — sometimes at authority, my bosses, my coworkers. And yet, I have a pretty comfortable life.

My missteps have not cost me my privilege. The system works for me. I have the presumption of innocence. I have the benefit of the doubt.

I’m a middle-aged white woman in America, and people assume things about me — that I can be trusted, that I’m reasonable, that I’m responsible.

Not everyone gets that. That’s why it’s a privilege.

And because I have privilege, I have a responsibility to speak up for those who do not.

And not just speak up, but act up — write blogs, upset family and friends with my questions and comments, step into awkward work situations, give money to those who need it, and protest. If I can do more, if my privilege affords me the opportunity to be an agent of change, a worker for justice, I’ve got to do that, too.

Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. And further, it doesn’t cost me my privilege. It costs some time, some comfort, and likely some money, but it doesn’t take away my ability to enjoy my backyard, to move freely in society, to live and breathe without fear that my life will be unexpectedly cut short due to racial violence.

Rather, speaking up — and acting up — for the sake of equity, for the sake of someone else having an opportunity to sit in the cool breeze of a summer morning, sipping tea and watching bunnies frolic in the grass, for the sake of another human being feeding her children and expecting that they will all live into adulthood, that — that just might make me more fully human.

How can I do otherwise?

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,

    for the rights of all who are destitute.

Proverbs 31:8

Coronavirus Diary #13: Vantage Point

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

When I was teaching high school composition, I used to have my students watch the movie Vantage Point (available on Amazon or YouTube), which tells the story of an assassination attempt on the US President as seen from the various vantage points of different characters. The goal of watching this film, which I assigned over Christmas break before the start of the semester, was to get my students thinking about point of view and the reliability of narration. I wanted them to see that depending on where you are standing, the story might look very different.

And isn’t that true right now?

I spoke to my mother this week. She lives in small town Michigan, very far removed from the cities where Covid-19 has run most rampantly. Her county has had 82 total cases and 13 deaths. She is unfamiliar with the impact of systemic racism; her county is 92% white and she has no reason to believe that systemic racism has impacted the few people of color that she knows. Because it’s tucked back from the highway running through town, she rarely considers the Level IV correctional facility which houses over 1000 inmates, most of whom are likely people of color. From her vantage point, not much in life has changed. She feels free to go out of her house to shop in the midst of a global pandemic, even if she does have leukemia and is 78 years old. She’s wearing a mask, after all, well, except for that one time when she went to a graduation open house when she didn’t wear a mask — because, well, nobody was.

My daughter called yesterday. She lives on The Common in Boston, a city where Covid has infected over 13,000 people and claimed the lives of over 900. She woke up yesterday to the sound of police putting up barricades on the sidewalk outside her window. As the day progressed, Black Lives Matter protestors assembled behind the barricades on one side of the street; Blue Lives Matter protestors with the support of white supremacists gathered on the other. In the middle of these two groups police officers in riot gear patrolled back and forth. She called because she was riled up. She had left her building through the back entrance to protect herself from a potential clash of protestors, wearing a mask to protect herself from Covid. From her vantage point, life is full of danger and opportunity. She sees her position of privilege and feels compelled to speak up, speak out, and engage in a dialogue to impact change. She grew up mostly in spaces occupied by people of diverse backgrounds. Her partner is a person of color. She belongs to a church that is made up of people from many nations, many backgrounds, many socioeconomic levels. She works for a government agency that is committed to equity for all citizens of Massachusetts. She is hyper-aware of the realities around her.

Over the past week, I have been preparing to return to the office where I was working before I started to quarantine at the end of March. My company has done extensive work to prepare our environment to meet the requirements of re-entry — creating social distance, requiring and providing masks, ensuring that extra cleaning will be done, and limiting the number of students who will be in the center at any given time. The parents of some of our students really want them to be able to come into the center — they believe instruction will be more effective there. From their vantage point, opening our center is a great idea. However, many of the staff, who have been working remotely for the last three months, sheltering in place, limiting their exposure to others, and watching the trends of communities who have opened ahead of us, do not want to go back to the center. They believe it is unsafe, and they want the opportunity to continue to work remotely, since we’ve been doing so effectively for three months now with great success. From their vantage point, the risk of going back into physical contact is not warranted. They are wiling to lose their jobs rather than take that risk.

Meanwhile, our country is experiencing the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression of the 1920s. Many new college grads are spending their days alternating between applying for jobs and worrying about how they are going to pay their bills. They are taking jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees just to get a paycheck coming in. They are willing to take risks to work in environments that seem unsafe because they need money — that one little stimulus check way back in April has been gone for weeks, if they received it in the first place. From their vantage point, any work is better than no work.

Families are sitting in their cars in long lines to pick up free food because their money is gone. They worry they’ll lose their homes or that they will get Covid and need medical care that they can no longer afford because they lost their health care along with their jobs.

And each day we hear another story of a family and a community who have senselessly lost someone they love due to racial violence. We’ve heard about George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, but there have been many others. It’s not bad enough that these families are trying to manage the physical and financial ramifications of a pandemic, they are also grieving the loss of lives cut short for no good reason.

Most of us cannot imagine processing that kind of trauma on top of already overwhelming stress of all the change that we’ve undergone because of this pandemic. And we likely won’t have to. That kind of shit doesn’t happen in our communities, in our families. And we have this sense that we are invincibile. untouchable.

Yesterday, my daughter was out running in Boston and had her mask down around her neck until she saw someone approaching. At that point, she put her mask on out of respect for the other person, to reduce the risk of unknowingly contaminating him. He saw her put on her mask — he wasn’t wearing one — and he shouted at her angrily, “Really? Really?” as though he was offended by her gesture. From his vantage point, my daughter was protecting herself from him.

This morning in his rural church, my father-in-law who is 80+, was wearing a mask. A fellow congregant — without a mask — approached him and said, “Who are you protecting yourself from?” It was an indictment — didn’t my father-in-law trust the people he went to church with to be free of disease? From that man’s vantage point, my father-in-law’s mask was ridiculous, unnecessary, an affront.

We have difficulty understanding the the actions and words of those who are experiencing life right now from a different vantage point. We don’t understand why a septuagenarian with cancer would go to a social event without a mask, what would cause a white man to shout at a complete stranger for merely pulling on a mask, or why a person with a job would refuse to go to work while countless others are desperately looking for employment.

We don’t understand the kind of history and indoctrination that would lead someone to take the life of another simply because of the color of their skin or what it must feel like to lose everything that you have. We only see the story from our own vantage point.

Unless, unless, we are willing to look at the events from a different point of view. What might happen if we set down our bags full of belief and assumption and took one step to the left or the right and tried to view the world from a different vantage point? Might we be able to understand a person’s desire to move freely inside the community she has known for decades? Might we feel the fear and outrage of someone who can’t comprehend why centuries-long misconceptions about race can’t be finally put away? Might we see the horror of watching a loved one have the oxygen pressed out of him? Might we appreciate both the need for work and the need to feel safe going to work?

Life is very complex. When over 300 million people live inside one country, they can’t all be standing on the same piece of ground — they won’t all have the same vantage point. If we want to come together and build a more perfect union, we’re going to have to walk around a little bit and see how others view things. We’ll have to share our stories and blend them into a more reliable narrative.

Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace.

I Corinthians 13:11

Close Contact, a re-visit.

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

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On Monday, I asked if you were willing to take some risks for the sake of others (post here). I’ve asked this before. In February, after the Super Bowl, I asked if you’d be willing to enter into dialogue about what in our culture perpetuates sexual violence (post here). In March of 2018, I wondered if you’d be willing to spend time in community, to be vulnerable and open to the change that can happen there (post here). Today, I’m reposting this piece that I wrote one month — one month — before we went inside to protect ourselves from a pandemic. In this post, I explore what we have to gain from looking at the ways we have hurt one another and committing to do the hard work of healing those hurts. I was writing on a more personal/community level, but it seems that this type…

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Coronavirus Diary #12: Taking Risks

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We’re still here. We’re sitting in the midst of 2020, continuing to daily discover the elements of this new reality, and starting to take some risks.

I met a friend at a park yesterday, to share a cup of coffee, to chat, to get to know one another a little better, and to discuss challenges and opportunities we have encountered in writing and in education. I walked up to find her sitting at a picnic table, mask in hand. I’d left my mask in the car, absentmindedly. We agreed to situate ourselves at a table “six feet apart” which feels awkward. We find ourselves willing to taking a risk to sit in that awkwardness in order to be together, to build relationship, to share life.

My husband and I were in a similar situation last week when we met with the members of our community group outside. We hadn’t physically been together since early March, and we were excited to see one another, but what would’ve have been hugs turned into awkward negotiations of space as we gathered around a picnic table to chat and catch up. We all agreed to take some measured risk, to share space, to hear one another’s voices in person, to build community.

Yesterday morning, after my meet-up at the park, I was driving to my first Hellerwork appointment since March 24, when I passed a large group of people gathering to walk to mark the celebration of Juneteenth and to acknowledge that though we’ve come a long way from the days of slavery, we have a long way yet to go before people of color experience equity in America. I saw many, most wearing masks, walking in groups of two or five or eight, carrying signs, wearing T-shirts with messages of unity and support. They were willing to take a risk — to come outside and gather during a pandemic — for the sake of racial equity.

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2020/06/hundreds-gather-in-ann-arbor-to-celebrate-juneteenth-march-against-racism.html

On Friday night, my husband and I watched Just Mercy (streaming for free right now), a story that horrified me when I read the book several years ago, but doubly horrified me at this watching as I got a deeper realization of the hatred and harm that has been inflicted on Black bodies over the course of our nation’s history and that is still happening right now. We risked feeling uncomfortable on a Friday night, when we could’ve chosen yet another comedy or feel-good drama — either of which might’ve distracted us from this current reality. We took this risk to acknowledge the truth of our nation’s history and to realize the value of celebrating Juneteenth.

I walked into my practitioner’s office on Saturday wearing a mask; she was wearing one, too. In order to treat me, she has to be up close and personal, touching my body, sharing my space. She manipulates my fascia, kneads my muscles, coerces my IT band, and tries to convince my SI joint that it can indeed function according to design. She’s taking a risk to care for me, and I’m thankful. I’m taking a risk to see her, to allow her to get back to work after three months at home, and she’s thankful.

I head from that appointment to the pharmacy to pick up a medication that keeps my ocular herpes in check, to pick up a birthday and a graduation card, and to purchase more immune support tablets. The pharmacist is behind a sheet of plastic, but she takes the items I have touched, scans them, and hands me my bag. She’s taking a risk to support my health. I’m taking a risk, too. We both wear our masks; our eyes meet. I thank her; she thanks me.

From there I walk next door to the grocery store. I get two of every item on the list, check the stock and price of toilet paper (even though we now — finally — have a two-month supply at home), and stand on the X that keeps me 6 feet away from the next person in line for the cashier. I give the person ahead of me plenty of room to make his purchases and then move forward when it’s my turn. I swipe my card, place my bags back in the cart, and then take the receipt that is handed to me, knowing it has been touched by other human hands. Those hands have taken a risk to serve me, and I have taken a risk to be served.

Every day right now, it seems, comes with a level of risk I had not been aware of before. It’s a risk to buy groceries, get gas, see the doctor, or visit a friend. Activities that were previously mundane and performed without much thought now take a measured intentional approach, which I am willing to take for the things that I need.

Am I willing to take risks for others, too?

Am I willing to speak out against injustice? Am I willing to say — and post — that Black lives matter? Am I willing to walk in a protest? Am I willing to challenge the misconceptions of others? Am I willing to risk friendships with people who disagree with me?

Am I willing to point out the audacity of a president who encouraged thousands of people to gather on his behalf — to sit side by side in an enclosed space — not six feet apart around an outdoor picnic table? Am I willing to be outraged at the language he used to threaten those who might protest such a gathering?

Am I willing to risk examining my own beliefs, my own thoughts, my own choices? Am I willing to see my own prejudice? My own selfishness? My own fears? My own mistakes?

I want to be willing. I want you to be willing. I want us to be willing.

It’s scary, knowing the risk of danger, of infection, of change, of progress.

We step out carefully, wearing our masks, looking in one another’s eyes, keeping a safe distance, listening carefully, examining our hearts, interrogating our motives, and willing to exchange the ways we have known for a way that will ensure the safety, livelihood, and freedom of others.

It might be uncomfortable to do things differently — maybe even a little bit risky — but as one Black life after another is cut down before our very eyes, as they have been being cut down for hundreds of years, the risk of staying silent, of continuing in the path we have been on, is greater still.

I’m ready — are you ready — to start taking some risks.

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.

Isaiah 1:17