This is what hope looks like

Hope isn’t a feeling.
Hope is an action.
Hope is choosing to believe that there is more than this.

This is what hope looks like:

The young lady pictured above is Haineyehya. She’s 6 years old, and you’re looking at her living room: a burlap cloth on top of rough gravel.

There’s a famous saying: With great power comes great responsibility. This is not true. Not because we don’t want it to be, but because responsibility is a choice. In my part of the world, everything we feel, everything we think, everything we do is a choice. A choice to act or not act. A choice to see or not see. A choice to accept or a choice to stand up and declare “This is not okay.”

I have privilege. I have tons of privilege. I am, quite literally, blessed: my children are safe and fed. My house is solid and warm. I am healthy. I work. I have an education. I have choice. Not just choice, but Choice, because I can decide what on what we eat, when we eat, when we sleep, what we wear…I have and have and have.

Syrian refugees do not have.
Haineyehya’s family does not have.
She is not safe.
Her belly is not full.
She is not warm, tucked up inside a solid house with soft furniture and cozy rug.
She has two dolls and sits on rough burlap over rocks.

Her family does not have the choices I have, and likely not the choices you have.

But they do have some.

They choose to be brave, to give up the normal lives they had, to cross borders to keep their families safe.

They choose to hope, to have faith that this too will pass, and that they will overcome.

If people with absolutely nothing make such earth-shattering choices, then why can’t we?

We can choose responsibility. We can choose to exercise our great power by contributing to Haineyehya and her family, and the millions of other families like hers.

I have chosen to sponsor her, to take some responsibility for her. Will you choose to help her as well?