It’s Hard.

Nov 4

This past week was Halloween.

Before I go any further, I have to let it be known, I have strong dislike for Holloween and say so at least once a day from October 1st to October 31st. If you are a person who likes Halloween, the decorations and all that, my feelings toward Halloween aren’t personal against you nor are they meant to shame you. The truth is, I love autumn. Fall is my favorite season, hands down. When the leaves begin to turn, the air smells like bonfires and there is finally a relief from an often grueling, humid, August. When this happens, I breath a little easier. Beauty attracts me and I have a special affection for the beauty of my Minnesotan home in the fall. Halloween taints this for me (if you are a lover of Halloween, please keep reading, there is redemption. Insert laugh/cry face here).

Ever since I was a child watching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, diving through Picture Picture to see a real live tarantula and the subsequent dream I had where my room was covered in tarantulas (my brother already a casualty of their poison in the bottom bunk) I have not been a fan of giant spiders. Maybe this helps you understand my distaste for when they show up on lawns and crawling from rooftops along with other ugly things representing death and dying, I just don’t like it. It is ok if you do, I hope we can still be friends now that you know the truth of my feelings.

Fortunately, like mostly all things, Holloween too has its redemptive qualities. I love seeing the creativity of my God show up in my home as my husband and children try to come up with thematic costumes. I am also someone who often prefers kids company to that of adults, so handing out candy from a big bowl at my front door is a treat for me. What a privilege and honor to smile at, affirm, see and gift candy to children.

An expected consequence of Halloween and trick or treating is the bowls of candy that end up on my kitchen counter. In our home the girls pool their loot together, except this year the oldest one (who probably embarked on her last trick or treating adventure) kept hers to herself, the natural repercussion of this was the dog getting into her candy but, I digress.

My favorite candy I dig for in those counter top bowls is, Peanut M&M’s. I don’t know what it is about them, but I love them. They are a treat for me. As I was reaching into the big bowl for a fun size yellow pack my friend and co -worker told me the story of the M&M.

“You know,” she said, “we wouldn’t have M&Ms if it wasn’t for war”

She proceeded to tell me how during the Spanish war chocolate had a candy coating so it wouldn’t melt, and this is where M&M’s originated.

After asking her how in the world she knew that, I said out loud, everything good comes from something hard. We wouldn’t even have peanut M&M’s if it wasn’t for war.

Today I picked up a friend on my way to Bible study and after we had caught up a little she asked how things were going with Stories Foundation (if you are new here, Stories is the nonprofit I run). Everyday, these days, I dread this question from the people in my life, “you know, it’s hard.” I said, determined to be honest.

Yesterday I had another meeting with a bank. I say another because this meeting is one in a long line of bank meetings in the past six months. This bank was one who we had been discussing terms with for 6 months and instead of coming back with a “if you bring x amount of money we can fund your project at x percent” they came back with a “we have to pass on your project.”

It was a surprising conversation, and an all too familiar one at the same time.

If you have been following the story of Stories, you know we are trying to buy land to build a giveback cafe on to fight human trafficking. We have the cash to buy the land but we are having a heck of a time trying to find a funder for the $1.8 million cost to build. The meeting yesterday was familiar because I have had over 10 similar ones in the past 6 months.

Today I took Ernie, my dog , on a walk. It is getting downright cold here in Minnesota, but the sun was out and the day - beautiful. As I thought about the obstacles in front of me and the journey we have been on so far to work toward changing culture with the goal of having less victims of modern day slavery and exploitation in our communities and helping those who have already been negatively impacted, I was reminded again how even in hard seasons there is still much beauty. We can't separate out the hard and the beautiful, they are too closely intertwined.

Life is often like the M&M story, out of the truly hard and sometimes very ugly times, necessity births something sweet, something we wouldn’t have if the adversity, and pain, hadn’t ever existed.

I can’t testify yet to how we are going to fund this giveback cafe to fight human trafficking, I do know there are still new banks to talk to, new people to ask if they see themselves in being a part of an M&M out of war kind of story. But even more than that, when I look at myself and the people who are journeying with me, those we have touched already through the work we have done, I know the hard isn’t in vain. Change is coming and has already begun in many, it is definitely doing it’s good work in me.

I will close today’s thoughts with this, earlier this fall I was asked to speak at a Gala for another nonprofit partner in the Twin Cities where I live. Before I took my spot behind the podium, they played a video of a Survivor of trafficking who had found refuge within their program. She had been given safe space to heal and make friends with herself again. As I held the microphone in my hand I went off script.

"If everything we did was only for that one person, it would be worth it,” my eyes locked with those in the audience. “I would do anything for one of my children to know her worth, value, dignity and humanity. Anything.”

There are hard, ugly, things in this world. People hurt each other. Wars happen. Women and men are sold for sex and used for labor, every day, every night, over and over again.

But that doesn’t mean we stop fighting.

We can’t stop innovating and working towards change. It doesn’t mean we don’t coat a piece of chocolate in a hard candy coating so men who are going to fight, maybe even to death, can have something sweet to eat. If even one person is helped, it matters, it matters enough.

Life is hard, and it is also good. I guess I am here to say to whoever is willing to listen; the good is still worth fighting for.

I still believe in redemption and restoration.