She’s livin’ in a world and it’s on fire. 

My beloved daughters: 

Almost daily you have heard me say that the world is on fire. 

I honestly don’t know how else to describe what is happening in our country and the world. I know you are seeing images of things like political assassinations, worshippers attacked in a church in our state, and rubble in Gaza and Ukraine. We spent our summer under the haze of Canadian wildfires fires and watched their smoke blanket our beloved Lake Michigan. We are living in a dumpster fire filled with headlines heavy with the heartbreak of gun violence, school shootings, and lynchings in Mississippi. People are divided and weary. There is violence, chaos, anger, hatred, and despair. And it certainly feels like there are more people trying to burn down free speech, medical health and safety, human rights, and a fair and just legal system than trying to establish peace and justice. Yes, the world is on fire.

It feels like too much. People with power and authority keep adding fuel to the fire rather than put the fire out. I won’t pretend it isn’t hard. You can see it in my face and hear it in my voice. Most days, I feel like I’m burning to a crisp. We live in a time when the heat is real, and the sparks are everywhere. As Alicia Keys sings, “She’s livin’ in a world and it’s on fire / Filled with catastrophe…” 

I cannot see through the smoke and flames to find anything clean, fresh, or hopeful.

This fiery world is not the one I wanted to give–or planned on giving–to you. I wanted to provide you with a world where the Light shines in the darkness and drives that darkness away. I wanted to give you a world lit by a fire that illuminates but doesn’t destroy. 

Instead, I send you into the world that is literally and figuratively on fire. And my fear as your mom is that too many people are trying to burn everything, including you, to ashes. 

I send you to school each morning, praying that it’s not the last morning we have together. 

I send you out with friends, praying that you are protected from predators who would steal your body, your choices, and your voice from you. 

I send you out into the world and pray, hope, plead, and beg that you will come back to me safe, unscorched, free from burns and blisters. 

But here’s what I need you to know: your dad and I are raising you to be fire, too. Not the kind that destroys, but the kind that lights the dark. 

When Alicia Keys sings about a girl “on fire,” she isn’t just talking about a single, individual female. She is naming a truth about every daughter, every fighter who walks into this burning world and shines anyway. That’s you.

Yes, the world is on fire—but so are you.

Being on fire means you don’t wait for permission to be brilliant. It means standing tall even when your knees shake and people are trying to douse your flame with jeers, scorn, and lies. It means carrying kindness like a torch, burning through bitterness and fear. It means knowing your voice matters when others try to extinguish it. It means trusting in the women God is creating you to be. It means being free to take up space and use the gifts you have been given. 

Remember that your fire won’t look like someone else’s. Sometimes it’ll roar like a bonfire—bold, unstoppable. Other times it will flicker like a candle—quiet, steady, barely visible but still holding the dark at bay. Don’t ever underestimate either flame. Both are powerful. Both are needed.

There will be people who fear your fire, who try to douse it, who call you “too much.” Let them. You don’t exist to make others comfortable. You exist to blaze your way, to spark change, to remind this weary world what Light looks like.

And remember: fire spreads. When you use your flame to lift others, to listen, to love, the embers leap from your heart to theirs. You won’t always see the lives you’ve touched, but trust me—your glow will leave traces.

So, my daughters, don’t be afraid of a world on fire. And I’ll try not to be frightened either. Stand in it. Walk through it. Reach out and be sure you help others, like me, walk through it with you. Let your fire meet the world’s flames, not to destroy, but to transform. You were made with the spark of the holy.

Be the fire that doesn’t consume but creates. And look for the helpers who are trying to put out the dumpster fire while tending your sacred flame.

Because yes—the world is on fire.

But so are you.

With all my love,

Mama

She’s livin’ in a world and it’s on fire

Filled with catastrophe

But she knows she can fly away

Keys, A. (2012).  Girl On Fire [Song]. Girl On Fire [Album]. RCA.