Kim Mack 
Our differences have become our bullets.
Our world is growing more and more intertwined with each other—distances shrunk by technology. There are more avenues to speak out, to speak at each other.
We coexist, but we don’t really know each other. We know there is a more beautiful world, but we don’t know how to get there. We cling to the safety of what we know.
And in that unknowing, fear grows.
And out of our fear comes misunderstanding, assumption, violence, and war. Wars between nations, between people groups. Drug wars. Gang wars. Political wars. Media wars.
But we want to heal all that’s tearing us apart.
We want to love anyway.
It’s an easy slogan. It makes a good hashtag.
But it’s so much more than that.
Love anyway isn’t easy. It’s not a quick recalibration of emotions or a flippant response to those at odds.
Love anyway comes when you’re unraveled and exhausted. When you’re broken and cynical and all you have are questions. Questions with no clear answers, no tidy responses, no easy solutions.
Love anyway comes when you lay down your differences not for inclusion or to blend in, but so that you can meet another person, can truly see them, without assuming their differences are a threat to your own.
Love anyway offers a new way. To press in to pain, to lean into indecision and chaos and ambiguity. To hold unresolved tension. Friendship and betrayal. Catastrophe and peace. Woundedness and healing. Fragility and strength. Unspeakable grief and immeasurable hope.
Face to face. Eye to eye. Engulfed in each other’s differences instead of running away or pretending they don’t exist. Listening without always needing to give a response. No justifications or long-winded explanations. Just love.
Choosing to love anyway isn’t easy. It doesn’t fix injustice or right unspeakable wrongs. It must not place a victim back under her abuser. You don’t get to love anyway by shame or coercion or sheer force of will. It’s not a command or a weapon.
It’s an invitation.
Love anyway offers a new way, where listening is more important than being right, where relationship is more important than holding power.
Love anyway asks what kind of people do we want to be?
You get to Love Anyway through pain. Through lived experience, through grief and rejection. It’s dreams that have died and hope that never grew wings.
You have to know who you are before you love anyway. To know what you believe and what you resist, what rules and regulations and religions you eschew and which you adhere to. It’s here, when you think you know everything, when you’re firm in your convictions. Here when the bottom falls out—will you love anyway?
And so when we call on each other to love anyway, to cross borders and races and religions and fears, to embrace the other and press in to pain—this is the love anyway we speak of. It’s not a command or a test. It’s the only way forward when you find yourself in the dark.
It’s only here that you begin to see a breaking light.
Our differences have become our bullets.
But they can be our bridge.
