I still remember the morning this all crystallized for me.
We were living in Belgium, and I woke up, got my girls up, and started our normal routine before glancing at the news on my phone. What I read stopped me cold. One of the deadliest acts of violence the country had ever seen had unfolded overnight while my children slept. My first thought was the one so many of us have had, more times than we’d like: What has this world come to?
Even halfway around the globe, the fear took hold fast. I had two little girls back then, and all I could think was: this is not the world I want them growing up in. I didn’t want them to believe tragedy was normal. I didn’t want them living in fear. I wanted them to be carefree and happy, to grow into strong, independent women who knew their mom and dad would always do everything in their power to protect them. But that morning I ran straight into the question that has no easy answer: how on earth do you protect your children from evil you can’t control?
I’ve been answering that question for years now. My girls are teenagers today, and my perspective has grown a great deal since that frightened morning in Belgium. Back then, I was reacting. Gripped by fear, desperate to shield them. Now, after actually doing the work of raising them, I’ve come to a steadier truth.
What I Can and Can’t Control
I cannot control the hard things in this world. I can’t promise my daughters a life free of tragedy, loss, or cruelty. No parent can, no matter how fiercely we want to.
But I am not powerless, either. Because while I can’t control the darkness out there, I have enormous influence over the light I raise up and send into it. I get to decide what I pour into my children. I get to decide how I show up, every single day, in front of the two people watching me most closely.
That’s where I’ve learned to put my energy. And that’s where I find my peace. This verse has anchored me through every hard headline:
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds. (Philippians 4:6–7)
I can’t meditate the evil out of the world. But I can keep my own heart fixed on what is good, true, and lovely … and I can teach my daughters to do the same. That, more than anything, is how I’ve learned to protect them: not by building higher walls, but by raising stronger, kinder, more grounded humans. (Choosing to dwell on the good is a practice I’ve written more about in Gratitude Through Reflection.)
Teach It and Show It
Here’s the thing I’ve learned about raising kind kids: you cannot simply tell them to be kind. You have to be kind, out loud, where they can see you.
I can make sure my daughters know God. I can teach them to treat every person they meet with respect and dignity, regardless of someone’s beliefs, background, or any of the surface differences the world loves to divide us over. I can teach them to stop and think before they act, to consider the consequences of their choices before they make them rather than after.
But none of that takes root if I don’t live it myself. Kids don’t become kind because we lecture them about kindness. They become kind because they grow up watching it modeled in their own home. In how their parents treat each other, treat strangers, treat the person who got their coffee order wrong. (It’s a big reason my husband and I work so hard at the kind of marriage we want them to learn from, something I touch on in our love story.)
So I’ve tried, imperfectly and every day, to show my girls what I most want them to learn. Can we do that for our children? Can we both teach and show them that love and kindness will always carry further than hate?
Choosing to Be the Good
We live in an age where outrage spreads like wildfire and hurt gets amplified with a single tap. It would be easy to throw up our hands. But I refuse to believe the bad outnumbers the good. I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary. Ordinary people running toward danger to help strangers, communities wrapping around the wounded, quiet acts of generosity that never make a headline.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it in words I come back to often: “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I believe that with my whole heart.
So our family made a choice a long time ago, and we’ve tried to live it ever since: we choose to be the good. We make giving back a regular part of our lives, not a one-time gesture. We try to lead with kindness wherever we have the chance. And online, instead of firing back at every post that doesn’t match our views, we simply scroll on by because our daughters are learning what it looks like to disagree without contempt, and that lesson matters more than winning an argument with a stranger.
None of this erases the hard things. Tragedy is still real, and grief is still heavy. But out of even the darkest days, I have watched love show up in staggering ways. I choose to fix my eyes on that love. I choose to believe there is good in this world and I choose to be the good in it.
That’s the choice I hope I’m handing my daughters, too. As for me and my house, we choose love and kindness.
To Anyone Carrying Something Heavy
If you’re reading this in the middle of a hard season, whether it’s a tragedy in the news or a sorrow all your own, please know my heart goes out to you. I don’t have words that can fix it; I’ve never believed words can. But I do believe our God is bigger than anything we face, and that He has a way of wrapping the hurting in a comfort that surpasses understanding. I pray you feel held today, and that you find even one small piece of good to hold onto.
And then, when you’re able, I hope you’ll join me in this: let’s keep choosing love. Let’s keep being the good. The world needs every bit of it we can give and so do the little ones watching us, learning how to be human.
What’s one small way you can show love and kindness today? Share it in the comments. Let’s encourage each other.
NOTE: This post was originally published in October 2017 in response to a national tragedy. It has been reframed as an evergreen reflection on raising kind children and choosing to be the good in the world.
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