I'll never stop acknowledging the pain of others, because empathy is the flashlight leading us toward wholeness and healing. If we ignore those in our world and our neighborhoods who are in pain, we will ignore our own healing. We suffocate our own hope, because we are connected to each other. Waging peace is believing that the best for another person is the best for myself, my country, and my world.

Showing up when violence wounds a community is what love looks like in public. Loving first, with our presence instead of only our prayers, wasn’t safe. Laying down my weapon in Iraq wasn’t safe either. But it’s what you do when you belong to each other.

We were outsider, yes, but insiders to a hard-won truth: giving your life away is the only way to truly find it. Loving our enemies is what transforms fear into freedom. Love has the power to change us. As Dr. Sabah told me that first day over tea, “when one of us is cut, we all bleed. That is humanity.