Hail on the window pains

A short reflective post

It's Saturday night here in Chicago, tomorrow we will celebrate fathers day and I look forward to time with family.  The last seven months have been - stretching.  Shortly after the last post I returned to the middle east and was immersed into long working days with no weekends off; we were responding to an emergency of mass displacement caused by war.  My immediate role included keeping track of all the items we distributed and activities we accomplished each day - where, when, and exact location.  Eventually our team decided to open an emergency field hospital near the front lines of war, and so the team was hard at work with planning.  Writing it all here seems daunting.

Tonight I logged back into this account after so long, and saw a draft that I began to write in March.  It was a stormy night, and I was feeling quite lowly.  My mind was tired from work and my days were surrounded with news on the war, on death, on suffering, on injustice and senseless daily killings.  The emergency was constant and it felt almost unreal at times.  I knew that people reading the news in distant lands could click a button, flip a switch, and forget it just like that.  Yet, for the families that I saw lined up to receiver their monthly food rations, or for the children I saw laying in the hospital bed with bandaged wounds - purely from weapons meant to kill - for them, and for us - it was a reality.  Somedays, like that day, it stared you in the face, unforgiving.  The disparity seemed to laugh in my face.  Below is the draft of the post from that day in March.  Hopefully providing a glimpse of the last few months and the reality that people are facing even still today.

- March Post - 

I can hear the hail coming down on the window pains and see the lightening bolts strike.  Thunderstorm.  Not too long ago I also heard the sound of fighter jets flying overhead, were they flying to or from the war in Mosul?  Are the children ok? 

I used to love the rain.  I used to squirm with excitement and run outside with my sister to try and see how long we could play with the lightening and thunder.  The constant pour of water was refreshing and in those days, seemed like they brought healing and life.  Now, rain often causes tears to well up in my eyes.  The thunder reminds me, as it reverberates in my heart, of the pain that families are facing not too far down the road from where I am now.

just down the road, are families sitting in their tents, freezing from the rain, trying to keep things dry.  Just down the road are people like you and me - filled with a sense of hopelessness by a war they can not control.  Just down the road, they sit, waiting, stuck, uncertain of the coming days.  And that rain that once brought me joy in a different season, now brings me a bit of their pain.  I will never know or understand what it feels like to be displaced from my home.  I will never fully feel their pain of loss from family members killed, raped, or brainwashed and it seems cruel to even write about it as if I do understand it, because I don't, and I won't. 

This broken world is still not yet fully healed, and there is a lot of work left to do.  Somedays I wish I could ignore it and live a normal life, with no pain or constant reminder of injustice and violence.  Yet - God is gracious and kind, and forgiving, and gently reminds me...

Pause - End Post

Hoping to post more now that I am home.  Especially hoping to finish my thought sand not leave them hanging for three months like that ... sentence above.  Grandpa - thank you for reading!  I love you!

Alison