76 Quotes About Veteran

Violence isn't waged only with guns, or war. Words can be violent, and so can the Erasure of wrongdoing.

We were supposed to be enemies, Americans and Iraqi’s, Muslims and Christians, newer immigrants and historical immigrants. But here we were, huddled around the table together, with candle lights flickering off cheeks and smiling eyes.

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.

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 but laying down my weapon in a war wasn't safe either. But it's what you do when you belong to each other.

No one who goes to war ever really comes back. I had lost things, had parts of myself taken away from me, not all of me boarded the plane to come home. The war also liberated me to love those I've seen as an enemy. It gifted me with knowing what I would die for and what was worth living for; being the first to love every single time and waging peace as if my life depended on it.

Violence isn't only bombs and bullets, it can be speaking words that dehumanize and looking away when someone needs you to lean in and stand up alongside them to confront the racism, the intimidation, or the belittling.

It's our responsibility to sift the beliefs we've been given through the lens of self-sacrificing love- because it's not love if it only serves itself.

Waging peace means we erase lines that tell us whose children are worthy to survive and whose children are disposable.

If choosing to love first can change enemies into friends on the battlefield of Iraq, I know that it can right here, in our own neighborhoods, churches, and families, who are battling over politics, religion, migrants at the border, and who belongs in America. Love is the foundation I'm planting feet on.