What do you do when your country breaks your heart… over and over again?

When the present saddens you, the future worries you, and you just want to pack up everyone you love and run away from it all?

Here’s what I do—besides deep breaths and desperate prayers:

1. I turn off the news. (They’ll still be talking about it later.)
2. I send some money to a cause I believe in, like Sandy Hook Promise or Everytown for Gun Safety.
3. I skim our family text string. It’s a fun mix of awkward photos—some oldies, some new, some with captions like, “Does this mole look weird to you?” It also contains bizarre quotes from the grandkids, (“When I grow up, I want to farm moss,”) and my husband’s latest use of teenage slang, (“The drip is bussin, Sam,”) just to make everybody cringe.

Okay, I hesitate to tell you about action item #4. It makes me sound like a materialistic American who soothes her feelings by going shopping, but here it is anyway:

4. Sometimes I walk the aisles of Miracle Hill.

Miracle Hill is the thrift store up the street. It’s a cheap distraction, okay?

I was there this afternoon, trying not to think about the horror of political violence and how I wish our leadership would take it seriously no matter who’s on the receiving end, when I spied something familiar.

Hey! I know those soup bowls!

They were made back in 2012 by kids at Duncan Chapel Elementary School. Our church sold them as a fundraiser for Mission Backpack, a program that feeds hungry kids on the weekends. Every week during the school year, volunteers gather in our food pantry to fill backpacks with a weekend’s worth of food. On Fridays, the backpacks go home with kids who may not have enough to eat. School staffers choose which kids need the food, and our volunteers never meet the recipients, so the families’ privacy is protected.

I didn’t buy the bowls. We have three beautiful bowls of our own. I love their wiggly lines, their jagged edges, and the children’s fingerprints in the clay. I LOVE thinking about kids helping kids. Just looking at those bowls gives me hope.

If you’re wondering if it bothers me that someone donated them to Miracle Hill, are you kidding?! I’m all for cleaning out cabinets. And get this—not only did those bowls make money for Mission Backpack, but now their sales will make money for Miracle Hill Ministries! The thrift store funds four rescue missions, addiction recovery support, and foster care programs. The kids helped each other back in 2012, and now they’re helping the community!

I look at all that helping, and I feel my heart mending!