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For the past few days, I’ve approached our washing machine and recoiled in disgust as the fumes of faeces have hit my nostrils. I’ve made as many excuses as I can for this stench without actually diving into the machine for firsthand research: maybe it’s all the rain we’ve been having? That has contributed to some stanky mildew masquerading as a boom boom? I’ve rationalised my way out of dealing with the problem until a few minutes ago, when it practically hit me in the face: a small log of poo resting neatly on the inside door of the machine. The problem–and its true source–could no longer be ignored. It had risen from the depths to the surface. And I had to clean that shit up.

So I did. Half-heartedly and gagging the whole time. As I wondered how many past loads of clothing have been stained by said shit, are now carrying around flecks of it, and how many future loads will bear its traces. This baby log likely (definitely) erupted from the skid marks of one of the boys’ underwear, but it will live on in ways both seen (smelled) and unseen.

(I’ll give you all a moment to adjust out of your “metaphor” setting.)

This morning I ran across the nearby bridge as Coolio sang the bars of “Gangsta’s Paradise” into my ears, and it took me back twenty-five years, to a dorm room in Birmingham and my first year of college. My new sorority sisters and I danced and swayed, beers in our hands, to the soundtrack of Dangerous Minds as we prepared for a night out on campus at our homogeneous school, situated in a “bad” (black) area of the city, across the street from a bar whose owners sold us cheap beer. In return, we gave them our patronage and assuaged our own consciences; how could we be racists if we supported their business and listened to Coolio?!

I’ll tell you one way: by, the next year, voting down the return of a black girl to our second night of rush after a heated debate. I remember the battle lines drawn that night and I remember who was on each side of them. I remember being on the wrong side as my friends on the right side recoiled in their inability to understand. I remember trying to justify what was utter shit: hatred dressed up as who cares what because it was, simply, racism. The shame I carry from that night, from so many other moments like it, will rightfully last me the rest of my life.

But I’m not here to fetishise past sins or create a linear narrative of wrong>>right. These white-girl stories of “I’ve seen the light” smack of virtue-signalling, and the position of White Saviour has been eradicated from the job listings, FYI. I’m here not to seek absolution but to grieve, I suppose, because when in doubt that posture has always been life-giving. There is always something to grieve in this world, especially now, and I know from experience that grace meets me there, always, with its hope.

I’ve been clinging to a Hebrew word recently: hesed. It has been defined many ways, but what it is, is a synonym for grace that dives deep. It is a covenantal, irrevocable love bestowed upon a beloved. It is unassailable. It is what I think about when I watch my kids cross into the school gate that I can’t, currently, cross with them: they are held by this chesed love that is greater than what even I can give them. It reminds me, it re-members me, when I am curled at home in a ring of anxiety wondering about their present and their future. They are beloved, and so am I. They are held in hesed, that which is greater than I can force or imagine.

All of us are held in this love. All of us were created to bear this love. This love that is greater than I can imagine, that cherishes me, it created and cherishes everyone, especially the brokenhearted, and it makes their lives matter. It proves their worth and it defies all hatred against them, and if I stand against them I stand against it. I stand against this death-defying, unassailable, perfect love.

I’m not going to do that.

The boys’ forced independence has forced dependence on my part: dependence on this greater love that holds them and directs their steps within a plan beyond what I can see, or smell, or imagine. I am counting on their belovedness, I am counting on mine, and I am coming to terms with all the ways I have begrudged others that belovedness before but how I can see it now, this love for all life that binds us together.

Yesterday, Little Brother had his first soccer practise and he ran up and down the field, pure joy streaking across his face. Later I got an email from The Kid’s teacher, letting me know he’d had a great day, how he had reached out to partner with the new girl in class and when another friend had wanted to join, he asked the teacher if they could have a group of three so she wouldn’t be left out. I watch these children of mine and know they are constant proof of a love greater than I have shown, greater than I can give. I see them as hope of a better world.

There is another Hebrew word I cling to: shalom. And it doesn’t mean, simply, peace like I used to think, but is better represented by wholeness. It’s a word that’s so far from describing our world right now, but its mere existence–like that of my children–is a source of hope: that it’s what we’re meant for. That it can be where we’re headed, carrying our grief for now but carried by what will heal it, all of us, the beloved.