11 - Confusion

As my relationships with my Palestinian friends grew, my homesickness started to slowly die away.  Though the heavy pain of homesickness was easing its weight, my confusion and anxiety was growing heavier. I didn’t have time to sit down and process my thoughts or the trauma of living at such a high level of anxiety. I was still in survival mode. The tension and anxiety of the place I was living was still and always at a boiling point. My body couldn’t have given myself a break to precess, heal, and refresh even if I wanted to. I was surviving. I was “making it” and just stuffing all of my trauma and questions until I had space to process. I needed to make it to the summer where I could go home and process. 

I knew that I was struggling emotionally and spiritually but I didn’t know where to begin.  As soon as I would put my finger on one thing I needed to work through, another would pop up. I was starting to have heart palpitations and I didn’t know what was wrong. I went to a local clinic and the doctor told me to “avoid stressful situations”. I wanted to say, “Your entire country is a stressful situation”. It was a weird appointment but I just added my heart palpitations to the list of things I would check out when I got home in the summer.

I also had a list of theological questions that were eating at me and the answers I was getting felt so flimsy in comparison to the suffering I was seeing. There were no good enough answers for human suffering. There were no good enough answers for the overt racism and inequality I witnessed everyday.  I was absolutely mind blown by the inequality my Palestinian friends lived under everyday. There was no excuse for it. I simply could not believe my eyes. There were also no good enough answers for a God who was good and yet allowed bad things to happen. There were no good enough answers for God’s sovereign control of the world. I still had a close relationship with God but these questions were reeling in my mind as the months went by. I had thoughts about these things before Palestine, but it’s a different ballgame when you're having to live it. Having a theological or political discussion was one thing, watching your thoughts and beliefs be tried right before your eyes is quite another. 

I struggled with what I believed about the sovereignty of God and how he relates to suffering and evil, but I was not in a place to be able to think about those things in a healthy way. Since the moments I left my home in July, it was one hit after the other. I would later describe my time spent overseas as being chewed up and spit out. My question of God's character was just another thing for me to juggle. 

________

Written - February 2015

this is truly me

authentically and honestly

i am angry

i am reckless

i am hurt

i am sad

i am wrong 

i am guilty

i am selfish

i am confused 

i can’t pretend to be any different 

i can’t live up to people’s standards

i can’t live up to my own standards

so the pressure’s off

and this is me

authentically and honestly 

_______

My three year old students and my coworkers easily became my favorite part of Palestine. They brought me joy and life in the midst of my confusion and fears. These kids stole my heart as I spent everyday with them.  I felt like I was a part of their families. I spent time in all of their homes and loved them as if they were my own family. In Palestine, on Mother’s Day, the kids always bring gifts to their teachers. There is a huge celebration at school on Mother’s Day for the teachers. At first, I thought it was a strange tradition but, in reality, I looked at them as my kids and they looked at me as a part of their families as well. 

As I watched them grow and fell more and more in love with them, my pain and questions became greater. I didn’t want them to grow up in war and fear. I wanted them to grow up and be anything they wanted to be, in a country where the economy could handle their dreams. I knew, though, where they were growing up, tension, Intifadas, racism, and hopelessness would be rampant.  Their futures are unknown and unstable.  The resources available to them are minimal if they stay in the West Bank.  Many of them will most likely grow up and move away for college and possibly return or make a home somewhere else. 

I remember thinking, if I were a Palestinian, and was told I had to stay in the West Bank for the rest of my life under Israeli occupation, I would want to die. Hopelessness fills the streets like a fog you breathe in and out everyday. It seeps into homes and businesses and settles in like a deep pollution you can’t get rid of. I desperately wanted my kids to grow up in a place full of hope and life, not depression, hopelessness, and war. 

The Palestinian Christian population is also dwindling.  In just the year I was there I knew quite a few families who were making plans to move to the United States or Europe. Our Palestinian pastor put it this way, “The Palestinian Church is like a mouse running around between two fighting elephants - the Jews and the Muslims.”  

People talk about territorial spirits in one country or another.  The spirit of hopelessness and heaviness is one of the many territorial spirits of Palestine/Israel. For such a “holy” place, it feels incredibly heavy and dark.  Towards the end of our time in Palestine, my roommate and I took a trip to Jordan to visit a friend and see Petra.  We crossed the border, got into a taxi, and headed to Amman. As we started driving away from the Israeli/Jordanian border deeper into Jordan, I felt a huge weight lifted off. It felt so good. I looked over at my roommate and she was smiling too. We both stared at each other and I said, “Did you feel that?” She did. We laughed and couldn't believe that there was such a stark difference just from crossing the border. We both described crossing the border as physically taking off a 50lbs backpack. 

Now, that’s not to say that we didn’t enter into another country with it’s own territorial spirits and issues, but for us, it was a welcome relief from what we had been living under. I think it was also a wake up call for us to be on guard and teach us how to better pray.  

As I thought about the hopelessness, fear, and tension my kids and families were living in, I wanted to say I trusted God to keep my kids safe from it all but, after a year in the West Bank, I wasn’t sure. I felt like I needed to step in and help God protect them from the hurt that they could face in their lives.  At some point during that year, I started to feel as if he wasn’t doing a very good job of protecting them by himself. If he let missiles fall on houses in their neighborhood, he’s got to be missing something. 

____________

Written April 2015

All my broken accusations, 

All my questions of his identity,

He has done nothing but listen,

Patiently listen.

Oh how slow he is to anger

and how patient he is to give grace.

I came to him in anger and confusion, 

looking at suffering, with an angry finger pointed directly at him.  

“It is your fault!”, I accused.

“You have done this.”

“And if you haven’t done it,” my confusion added, “you have allowed it and that is wrong.

You are wrong.”

“You, Sir, cannot be good.

You, Lord, cannot be loving.”

Anger welled up in me.

Angry tears rolled down my cheeks.

This God I thought I knew, who is He? 

The very core of this Jesus I had fallen in love with is goodness and love. 

“How, sovereign Lord, do I reconcile that with death and suffering. 

No, this is not good.

You are not good.”

Anger, left unattended, turns to hate.

My heart secretly whispered the dark and raw words, “I hate you, God.” 

My mind tried to drown them out knowing their wickedness,

But the depths of the heart cannot be covered up by pretty words.

Oh how slow He is to anger

and how patient he is to give grace.

In the middle of my raging accusations, His answer came.

He did not bother to answer my accusations.

He did not even address my anger. 

No, instead, He came close,

very close,

and whispered:

“Where were you, daughter, when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

The power in His whisper roared in my soul.

I had uttered what I did not understand,

Things too wonderful for me to know.

Yet, in the power and authority of His tone, there was love. 

Love that instilled confidence that He actually delighted in me.

No, He owes me no explanation of His identity or actions 

and He did not give one.

But what He did, cannot be taken away from me.

He called me daughter.

In the middle of questions too high for me to grasp answers to,

He reminded me that He is my Father.

And the only question He asks this child is,

“Do you trust the Judge of all the earth to do what is right?”