Our Greatest Hope For You Is This…

We may have never said this, but there is something we want for you more than anything.

This thing is penultimate. It’s the reason we greet each day, why we live in Iraq, and why we do everything we do. It’s the reason we write, speak, share, story, email, and everything else—it’s our reason for being.

Can you guess what our greatest hope for you is?

Maybe first, a few things it isn’t…

It isn’t for you to volunteer more, though our volunteers in Iraq, Syria, and the United States are collectively some of the most mind-splatteringly wonderful people in the universe.

It isn’t for you to do more, read more, share more, or even care more, though we’re thunderstruck time and again at how you do share, read, and care so deeply for the people we work to serve!

It isn’t even for you to give more money, though your giving has turned worlds upside down, and every time you give you’re choosing to be part of something transformative—a fact that’s especially true of those of you who give monthly!

No, the thing we want most for you is this: we want you to believe in your own agency.

We want you to see that you are wildly capable of turning this world upside down because we’ve seen it again and again. In fact, many of you are the ones who taught us this by living out the preemptive love way right in your own neighborhoods! You’ve shown us the upside-down love that sends enemies reeling and stitches whole communities back into wholeness, and it inspires us!

You understand that you are not only a ‘donor,’ supporting the ‘doers’ way over there—you are the ‘doer’ your community needs!

We’ve seen it over and over again in the eyes of people all over the planet, whether in Iraq, Syria, the United States, and so many places in between: people feel like the world is one big dumpster fire and there’s nothing they can do about it.

But that’s. Not. True.

It breaks our hearts to think how many people have told you the world just needs you for your money, just for your vote, just for your time or views or subscriptions, as though that’s all you have to contribute… Of course, the world needs those things, but more than anything it needs YOU!

It needs all of you, full-hearted and aflame to the brilliance of your own agency.

Your very existence is proof that things can be better. You are a living, breathing, miracle and living proof that the world isn’t what it has to be, that The More Beautiful World is closer to us than our own blood, and that we are all chock full of creative genius and creativity.

This is what we tell widows who fled ISIS and are trying to start a job to feed their kids, it’s what we tell our staff in Texas as they work to serve victims of Hurricane Harvey, and it’s what we’re telling you, whoever and wherever you are. You are absolutely the beautiful, broken hero your community needs to be transformed.

Believe that of yourself a little more today, and we’ll do the same!