11 Sep Carrying love
By eight in the morning it was already one hundred degrees in Phoenix. I was driving home from dropping the girls at school, the news playing on the radio, the weight of it pressing in. War, cruelty, hate. All of it too much to carry before the sun was even fully up.
Then I saw him. An older man, scruffy, hunched over, pushing a shopping cart along the busy street. Every inch of the cart was used. Boxes and bags crammed inside, fastened down with ropes and bungee cords. A sleeping bag strapped to the front. A jacket draped over the side. The cart looked impossibly full, yet he kept pushing it forward in the heat.
Taped to the side of the cart were torn scraps of cardboard, scrawled in thick black marker: You matter. Don’t give up. You are loved.
Someone carrying so much still thought to carry love, too.
That morning reminded me: this is what we do when the world feels dark. We lift each other up. We remind one another that love is still here. We believe—against all evidence—that the world is still worth saving.