One Choice at a Time

You can’t save the world, but keep trying in any small way you can…. It doesn’t matter how you fight, but that you never, never stop.

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin

I’ve learned, as an adult, that I have very few actual life skills. Sure, I can keep a herd of children alive, diagram a sentence, bake a halfway decent loaf of bread, but beyond that, I’m pretty worthless. You do not want me in a survival situation (I would’ve been a failure on the American frontier—Caroline Ingalls puts me to shame). I will not be curing cancer, solving world hunger, or rappelling off the side of a building to take out a ring of bomb-wielding terrorists.

This is on my mind because, today of all days, I’m thinking about heroism and heroes. Today, we proclaim again the worn-out promise never to forget. We share our stories. We think longingly of those brief weeks of unity, even though they came at such a price, and we post on social media about how we wish we could recapture that feeling of purposeful oneness.

And then we go back to arguing about masks and vaccinations. We hunker down in our camps of liberal versus conservative. We return to our mundane daily lives, waiting for a hero to step in to make things right, to bring back the unity we so briefly experienced, to fix what we are so sure The Other Side has broken.

I’m writing this to you as a military spouse, someone who has counted the cost of these last twenty years.

I’m writing this to you as the wife of law enforcement, someone who has seen, time and time again, her husband and his team expected to come in and fix the problem (whatever the problem is).

And I’m writing this to you as an American who is still looking in from the outside.

Stop waiting for your hero.

Stop telling the military how much you appreciate their service. Stop telling the policeman and the firefighter and the doctors and the EMTs and the nurses how heroic they are. Stop thanking the heroes. Stop saying the words, if you are not going to make any effort yourself, if you’re going to keep trying to break down what they are trying to save.

We spend so much time and effort and energy (and money) being against so very much. Stop it. Be for something.

Be for your neighbor. Be for the homeless man you pass on the street. Be for the unwed mother. Be for the veteran with PTSD. Be for your neighborhood, your community, your town, your country.

Be the hero we need. Be it in whatever small way you can.

Maybe your act of heroism is to be fully present in a conversation. Maybe it is to pass on a book or share a cup of coffee. Maybe it is showing up even when you are tired and peopled out (maybe it is staying home when you have possible Covid symptoms). Maybe your act of heroism looks insignificant—you aren’t saving people from a burning building or shooting down enemy aircraft or patching up survivors—but maybe it is one small step towards saving another’s life.

In America, we have the mythology of the lone cowboy, coming in to save the day. Hold onto this idea, and we may as well give up hope. There is only ever one Savior, and until He returns, we are called to reflect His nature and keep offering salvation one choice at a time. But are we? Or are we still waiting for someone else to come and do it for us?

We live in a broken and hurting world. And I may not be anyone’s preferred hero—especially my own—but I have to ask myself: what uniquely Marian way can I offer salvation in a small way to the people in my circle who are struggling to get through another day (just like we all are)?

And then I hope you will ask yourself with me—in the middle of a pandemic, at the end of a twenty year war—how can I give life to others? How can I be a hero with the skills and passions I have? How can I save someone else’s life (maybe my own) by making one seemingly unimportant but actually life changing choice at a time?

I’m not going to be an air warden, walking the bombed out streets of London, looking for survivors. I’m not going to be Caroline Ingalls either, making my own butter and taming the American wild. I’m not working in a hospital saving anyone’s life. I’m not holding the hand of an Afghan refugee, helping them navigate another day. I’m not running into the crumbling, burning skeleton of a tower trying to lead a survivor to safety. Thank God for the people with the capabilities to do the things that I can’t.

I’m not going to be Mrs Incredible, but I can be myself, a tall-but-still-small person looking for whatever way I can find to save another’s life.

Because if I stop waiting for someone else to come save us, if I stop holding my breath and hoping a hero will ride in on his horse and fix all the things, and if I instead start looking for ways (no matter how small) to save someone else—if all of us did that—what could our world look like?

I think it would look better than this.