When You Leave the Bubble

November 24, 2015

I was sheltered growing up in a lot of ways. We didn't have cable TV, we listened to only Christian radio (my mom still jokes about how I would be so shocked when she knew a hit pop song on in a store), I didn't have a smart phone, my computer time was limited and monitored...etc.

There were many good things about being sheltered like that. I grew up with more of an innocence-- I played outside instead of playing on a screen, I read books instead of watching shows, I found creative ways to entertain myself, I believed the best in the world, I spent many hours at church during the week, etc.

Lately, I've been making a consistent, conscious choice to stop sheltering myself. It would be easy to do even now, even though childhood is long gone.

It would be easy to only follow my friends on social media instead of reporters and news channels and justice organizations. It would be easy to never turn on the news and keep my TV on the Food Network instead. It would be easy to read books full of love stories instead of ones telling true and tragic stories and sharing necessary information. 

It would be easy to stay sheltered. It would be easy to stay innocent, but it would also mean staying ignorant.

I don't want to choose that. 

I am choosing awareness. I am choosing to open my eyes, to open my heart, to open my mind, to open my ears. I am choosing to read the articles with the heartbreaking headlines, and to not stop with just one. I'm choosing to listen to perspectives from different sides of the spectrum so I can be well-informed in crafting my own beliefs and opinions. I'm choosing to click on the trending hashtags and read what all kinds of people are saying about the injustices sweeping our world. 

It is not easy to choose awareness. I know that. Ignorance would be easier, but it wouldn't be better. I'm choosing heartache when I read the stories of the lives lost and the acts of terrorism and the hunger strikes and the grief. I'm choosing to wrestle through the issues I have no idea how to solve, choosing the uncomfortable feeling of not know what to do, how to help, how to act, how to love, how to protect, how to serve. I'm choosing the uneasy feeling that comes when you take off the rose-colored glasses and see the brokenness and pain all around.

I'm choosing these things because I know ignorance is not bliss. As a child, my innocence was protected by parents that loved me well, and I'm deeply grateful for it. As an adult, I'm choosing to step out of the safe bubble and into the hurt and the heartache and all the confusion, knowing I need to first be open to it before I can do anything else in response.

Open eyes, open mind, open heart, open hands, all open to however the Spirit will move and lead and teach me.