These lives matter.

Over the last few months, I have been reading, heartbroken, the all-too-frequent news from the US about the racism-inspired violence, police brutality, and other injustices that are faced by our black brothers and sisters in increasing number.  In the face of the horror, I have been moved and thankful for the Black Lives Matter movement, those brave and truth-seeing people willing to stand up and cry "No!" in the face of systems that are broken and entrenched.

And I have been thinking a lot about the phrase "Black Lives Matter," especially in the face of those who push back with "All Lives Matter."  I mean, of course they do.  No one is disagreeing with that.  The lives of middle-class white small-town Iowa kids matter too, and of course there are those from my small town who slipped through the cracks, who were never told that they mattered, who didn't know they were loved (or still don't), and their wrecked lives and insecurity are proof that people failed them, too.

But for the vast majority of "us" -- we the privileged -- we already knew we mattered, and the world treated us that way.  By the grace of God and the systems at work in the world, we got a good ol' public school education that told us we could grow up to be "anything we wanted to be."  We had parents who came to watch us play pitiful viola solos and told us that our effort mattered, we had teachers who knew our names and coaches who cheered us on and friends who reminded us our lives (in all their excruciating teenage drama) mattered.  We saw people who looked like us on the news, in college brochures, in suits & ties receiving rewards on the international stage.  We knew that our lives mattered already, intrinsically, and they could matter in a big way.

And it would be wrong, of course, to take that away.  The Black Lives Matter crowd isn't saying that it's wrong that some kids know they count and have hope and a future -- it's wrong that all kids don't know that.  But what's especially wrong is that it's mostly black kids who don't know that.  It's not all kids of every stripe, or all lives across the board, that are missing the security and confidence of being told -- verbally and in every observation -- that they matter, that they have possibilities, that they'd be missed if they were gone.  It's those who are outside of the systems of power, who -- for so many reasons, and such a long racist history -- don't hear that at school, or on the media, or in the workforce, or maybe even at home.  Of course every life matters.  But we don't need to remind people to care for those who are already well cared for.  Black Lives Matter points out that black kids also need to know their value.  They also need to know they're precious.  They also need to know that the world would ache with missing them if they were gone.  They need to know they have a hope and a future, that the Creator of the universe made them special, that He adores them, that He sees them, that He knows their names and far, far more.

And all of this is making me think of the kids at the cantina.  Granted, the situation of the Roma (gypsies) in Romania can't be fairly compared to the situation of African-Americans in the United States.  The history, the way the systems work, the political forces at play... I know they're different.  But if we're talking about groups of people who are ignored and considered that their lives are less valuable, and the need for solutions that are complicated and wide-ranging and deep -- we've got something in common going on.  So here's what it's made me think about.

There are these little girls at the cantina whose mom is clearly unable to care for them well.  They are dirty and stunted, mucus constantly dribbling out of their noses, raggedy sweaters hanging from their skinny little shoulders even in the midst of summer, because they seem to be the only clothes they have.  The five-year-old barely whispered and couldn't even feed herself using silverware when we first opened the cantina a few months ago (now, there's a new light in her eyes and she has mastered the art of using a spoon... she is undergoing this beautiful transformation from a silent, scared waif to an actual child, who giggles and looks at you with bright, flashing brown eyes, just because she's finally getting enough food).  Her younger sister, though, is still a long ways behind.  She's three, and still needs to be spoon-fed, and isn't yet totally in control of her bowels because she usually just walks around without pants, going whenever she feels the need in their tiny dirt yard.  Her eyes are glazed over and she stares blankly at you when you talk; she hasn't yet found her voice.  A week ago, I happened to be outside her house when her mom began to yell at her, and this tiny little girl just stood in the door, wailing heartbrokenly at the top of her lungs.  Crouching down to try to calm her didn't work, but as soon as I scooped her into my arms, she was quiet.  Instantly and completely.  And clinging to me like she'd never let go.

That was all it took -- lifting this little wisp of a girl who doesn't weigh a thing, holding her in my arms, whispering in her ear, and she calmed down.  She stopped crying.  For a minute, she knew she mattered.

And so here we are again, in this situation that is so unfair.  I walk home from the cantina past hundreds of kids who are playing and laughing with friends and holding hands with their moms and generally being cared for -- even if they live in an economically depressed small town with imperfect parents and a lousy school and a corrupt mayor.  Their lives matter, a lot -- the life of every single kid in Lupeni matters.  But these little girls, these ones who live on the margins in every way -- they are the ones who I want to raise a placard for.  They are the ones who are forgotten, or brushed away.  Their stories are blamed on something else -- parents who are lazy, bad moral character, poverty (but not its root causes), whatever.  And I just want to scream and say "No!" in the face of it -- to cry out that These Lives Matter, that these forgotten ones matter, and to pray for mercy and grace and truth.

So please pray with me for a day in which all kids will grow up knowing that they aren't the center of the universe, but that they are seen and known by the Creator of the universe.  And He adores them.  Not enough to accept them blindly to do whatever they want, to let them run and wreck our lives, but enough to die for them in order to remake them as His beautiful sons and daughters, the ones they were created to be.  They matter to Him.  They have to matter to us.  Especially the ones that currently don't.