Tomorrow my family and I will celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We will read, eat, donate, and talk about justice and equality. For my entire life, this day has been set aside to honor this hero but it hasn’t been until the past few years that it has meant more to me than a day off from school or work. It took me speaking hurtful words in front of a child I love to see my heart and my prejudice in a way that I had never seen before. Here’s how the story goes…

I grew up in a small beach town in South Florida where the school system is financially supported so that all kids in the county, regardless of color or socio-economic status, get the same amount of money put into their education. When I moved to St. Louis in my mid-20s, I quickly learned that was not the case here. St. Louis is one of the most racially divided cities in the U.S. and is made up of 24 (yes, 24!) separate school districts that are funded by the district they are located in, so the rich kids get a fabulous education while the poor kids who live only a couple of miles away and who are most all children of color, get an incredibly crappy education, and that’s putting it mildly. These are the schools my husband has worked in 13 years. Everyday he works in a community drowning in injustice and every night he comes home to a community of privilege. His students do not have that luxury. When they graduate at 18, many of them are already years behind their rich and even middle class counterparts because the system has worked against them.

I’ve never known what it feels like to feel safe in St. Louis. The first month I lived here, Andrew was over at my apartment and went down to his car to get something. It seemed to be taking too long for what he was doing and I was getting frustrated because dinner was getting cold so I went down to see what he was messing around with. It was then that I saw him take off running down the street while a couple of guys jumped into his car and took off in it. It took a few seconds to register but finally, I yelled up at my roommate to call 911 about a carjacking and went outside to look for Andrew. When he finally made it back to the apartment, he explained that he had had a gun held to his head, was punched, kicked, and had his car taken. The PTSD that occurred for both of us those next couple of years was terrible. Along with that, my prejudice, that even though it has ALWAYS been there, began festering. It didn’t look that bad from the outside. I had a couple of black friends who I loved, I always enjoyed getting to visit Andrew’s school to see the kids and I always enjoyed any get together with Andrew’s coworkers, many of whom were people of color. I didn’t “hate all black people.” Just the criminals, right?

A couple of years after Andrew was mugged, he was working in an alternative school and was meeting new students. He shook the hand of one young man and immediately had a physical reaction. It took him a minute to place him but he realized he was the leader of the group who mugged/physically assaulted/carjacked him. The young man was arrested and charged. The months leading up to the trial were brutal for Andrew. As a rule, he does not get stressed which always impresses me but during that time, I saw how the stress was taking a huge toll on him. He realized that it was his word against the young man’s and if he had learned anything during his many years living in St. Louis, his word would send that young man to jail for a couple of years. Even though Andrew was 99% sure that this was the young many who had held a gun to his head, he dropped the charges. I was furious. Where was the justice?! This man had caused both Andrew and I years of PTSD (and to this day, I still have huge fears in this city, especially at night). Andrew told me that if that 1% chance of the young man being innocent was true, he couldn’t live with himself for putting an innocent man in jail. This was not good enough for me. I wanted justice for what he had put us through. I knew my husband and I knew (and still know) without a shadow of a doubt that this was the young man that did those heinous crimes but I had to sit on it. There was nothing I could do.

Fast forward some more years and I am at a friend’s house who has a child of color. I made the comment to another friend about how if our house was broken into, it would most likely be by a black person. I knew immediately when I said it that I shouldn’t have. The child was too far away and too small to understand anything of what I was saying but it didn’t matter. I apologized later to the mom of the child and we had a good conversation about it. She was gracious and forgave me but I was still struggling with it. I knew I shouldn’t have said it but also, the statistics are there, that my statement was true. I was sorry I said it out loud but I didn’t feel wrong for the statement. The numbers were there to back me up! Shortly after, I had a group of friends over and asked my friend of color to stay behind because I wanted to talk about it. Really, I wanted her to validate me and tell me that I was right that I shouldn’t have said it but yes, it was statistically true. Well, as you can imagine, that’s not what happened. And rightly so. She GRACIOUSLY talked with me about it (she did not have to!) and spoke to me about her experiences as a black mom with a black son. Though I tried to push back a little citing those damn crime statistics again, I sat back and listened to her and was moved by what she said. There began God’s work in my heart to transform it and the way I looked at the black community. Though Mike Brown and Ferguson had happened the year before, it wasn’t until I said a stupid thing that my eyes were opened.

It is not easy to be humbled this way. It has been years now at this point and I still bristle when I feel like I’m being preached at by a person of color but I make myself listen and I make myself see myself somewhere in the narrative they are telling. I read articles I don’t want to read. I listen to podcasts that I don’t want to listen to, I go to lectures I don’t want to sit in on because I know I have to. As human beings, it is so painful to see where we are broken but I know that I won’t be healed unless I face this part of me. And facing these prejudices and realizing my own privilege allows us to raise our children in a way that they will grow up already knowing this about themselves. But that they will also grow up yearning for justice for the oppressed. Just as we never received justice for the infraction against Andrew so goes Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile’s families for injustices much more heinous than Andrew’s. I know what it feels like to have justice be unfulfilled and it makes my heart break for these families but more importantly, it makes me yearn for Christ’s return when all wrongs will be made right and his perfect justice will be dealt to all. I’m thankful for a savior who loves us so much that he made a way for us to be seen as his bride and be spared his hand of judgement.

So when my family and I celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. tomorrow, we will talk about what justice means and how it is our duty to fight for it for all people. We have chosen to send Lucy to a school where she is surrounded by children and teachers of color and we will talk about this and what that means to her and how their history of being oppressed has to stop with us. We will read a story about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to impress upon our children what an important man he was to justice and equality for people of color. We will sing happy birthday and eat a pie made of blueberries and peaches and talk about how both of the fruits make the pie as delicious as it is and without one or the other, it wouldn’t be as good. We will donate money to The ArchCity Defenders who work hard every day to reform the justice system, especially in the black community. Andrew and I will do our best to raise our children to fight for justice, to stand up for others when they see injustice, to love people of color, to not laugh at their unique names, to see the way they speak, their hair, their food and values as part of their culture and does not make them less than us in any way, that African American culture makes our country beautiful, and to understand that justice and equality will require a lot from them, my children. That there will come a point where sacrificing privilege and to be uncomfortable is the only way to heal these deep deep wounds. To remind them that God will give them the power to do what is right. And most importantly, we will pray “that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’… and that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope.”

Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.