“You need to choose the sword you fall on.”

Those words rang in my ears as I walked back through my office doors.

They hadn’t been said in warning. They were simply the last bits of a conversation with a wise woman who was commenting on my tendency to either push back or push the envelope, challenge the status quo and speak out loudly about my beliefs.

And yet, the words seemed to take on a shape of their own and drift behind me as I braced myself for my next challenge.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m a firm believer that challenges are great for character development. But they can also be senseless and tragic when created by one group of people against another group of people.

And more and more, that’s the type of  challenge I face on a daily basis.

Earlier in the week, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers conducted raids in my community and took numerous individuals into custody.

For some people, that just means they were following the law. For others, it demonstrates how a complex and outdated immigration system is hurting our fellow human beings. And for some hateful and spiteful individuals, it means that “foreigners” and “illegal aliens” are getting what they deserve.

But to people like me and my colleagues, it means families are being torn apart.

It means children are losing a parent.

It means people who have escaped desperate situations and horrific conditions are losing hope, struggling to navigate a complicated and bureaucratic system and living in fear that they will never see their loved ones again.

And it means that the challenges my colleagues and I face every day aren’t as simple as ensuring that families have housing, food and enough money to pay the utility bills.

The challenges aren’t as simple as advocating for immigrant rights or educating the community about the complicated immigration system in our country.

They aren’t even as simple as ensuring that teachers understand that a spirited debate about “illegal” immigration isn’t helpful when you forget that the child in the back of the room has a father who has just been deported.

The challenges we face aren’t simple because matters of the heart are never simple.

And the art of living with people who have different ideas, different skin colors, different religions, different beliefs and different histories is a matter of the heart.

Unfortunately, my heart has been breaking a little more each time I hear, read or witness another senseless attack on someone who is simply struggling to exist.

Which is the reason I’ve been sharpening that proverbial sword I was warned about.

My sword isn’t intended to hurt people, but, when it’s used correctly, it sometimes does.

That’s because swords were designed for fighting.

My sword is comprised of the words I write about the truth as I see it.  My colleagues have their own swords built on experience, education and passion. And all of us are using our swords to fight against injustice and to defend hearts that can easily break in today’s heated attacks on minorities, the poor and the undocumented.

We may trip and fall on our swords by accident, but there is no doubt that we will ever regret the fight.