DC filtered by China

This January was the first year I've been to the March for Life since I went to China, to study and then to teach.  I can't always see how living there has changed my perspective, but being in DC for a protest type event made it a bit hard to miss.

See, I had two gut level reactions at the march.  One is pretty much what you might expect -- a sick disgust mingled with heart wrenching grief that this is even a thing.  That my country, my first world superpower homeland, is legally okay with having millions of its citizens killed.  That's the reaction that you'd predict, right?  It's what I expected to feel, and I did.

But then there was this other reaction.

The one I didn't expect.

The one that was a mixture of joy, hope, patriotism, and thankfulness for the freedom that we do have.

See, I've been to Tiananmen Square a few times.

I think I have a pretty decent (okay, overactive) imagination, but my imagination is strained to the breaking point to picture half a million Chinese citizens marching into Tiananmen Square to protest anything and that happening peacefully.  (Don't get me wrong.  I love China.  It's a whole different ball game, though.)

But you know what?  I can picture half a million Americans marching through the nation's capitol to protest abortion with perfect clarity, because I've seen it.

And so -- so I found a hope that I wasn't expecting when I was in DC last month.  Hope not only in the sense of Well ultimately God is good, but hope in the sense that, Wow, we still have a lot of freedoms as American citizens.  I have a lot of freedoms.  There's an element of challenge, there, to be sure, and hopefully some encouragement.  There is a lot to complain about with the US, and a lot to pray about and work to change.  And we're blessed with a lot of freedoms to do exactly that.  Be thankful for them.  Use them wisely.

#WhyWeMarch

That was the trending hashtag on twitter for the 2015 March for Life in Washington DC.  I'd been there a few times before, but it was the first time for my two youngest siblings.  Why we march.  There are a thousand reasons, and there's one reason.  It was a good tag, I think.

I could give a lot of reasons for why the whole abortion/pro-life issue is one that I will get passionately heated about, but when I thought about that tag?  Let me be honest:  my mind can't really process the concept that tens of millions of babies have been killed on purpose in my own country since 1973.

What I can grasp is looking at my four younger siblings and thinking, This so easily could not have been.  All four of them, adopted.  All four of them unique with their own talents and quirks and stories.  All four of them used by God to shape me into who I am today.  They're my cohorts in trouble, fun, and life, my closest and longest friendships.

The fight for life happens on a national level but also a myriad of more personal levels.  It happens in marches in the nation's capitol and in adoption and foster-parenting and courageous decisions of birthparents, in education and in treating humans with dignity, in treating miscarriages like tragedies, in everything that goes into honoring God by how we treat other humans at every point in life.

My four sibs?

They're why I march.

There are a lot of words in my heart on this subject, but I think a lot of them would just be noise, especially in a public place online.  If you want to have a conversation, I'm glad to talk about my family and experiences.  Just shoot me a message.