Where It All Ended; It Began

Our plane lifted to the skies but I could not see the ground below for the tears in my eyes. My heart was breaking. I was leaving behind the world I knew. Our family had just shattered and now we were starting anew without a father. My world had just ended. 

For the next 17 years I lived a disconnected life. Everything that defined me—lay on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was set behind a wall so high, Jack the Beanstalk could not see over it. I mourned the loss but never truly got over it. 

Until one day, I returned. Though much older, my heart had stopped time on that fateful November day and now it started ticking again. Like fresh batteries giving new vigor, I explored the country and fell in love, not with a person but with a place. 

Then someone came along. 

And 3 years later, the life I thought was shattered was beautifully pieced together in a turquoise setting of white lace. 

I listen to Carrie Underwood's See You Again and the lyrics have shifted now. I still love Lebanon, in all her messiness of politics, garbage, crumbling buildings, and exorbitantly-priced potato sandwiches. Like a first love, I cannot forget dancing along her rocky sea's edge, the delightful taste of street food, the rush of air on my face as we speed along in the rickety bus. Art galleries, classical concerts, gourmet buffets, and hike after endless hike through cedar forests and vintage vineyards are forever pressed in my mind like delicate wildflowers in a scrapbook of time. 

Yet now, the stars are not the ones that barely blink in her night sky, competing with fireworks, machine guns' red blast, or nightclub strobe lights. They are the stars I see in my husband's eyes when he looks at me across the breakfast table. Now the light I follow is not the light of the Jounieh harbor or downtown's elegant commercial arena lit up to entice the buyer. It is the light of my husband's smile when I make him his favourite Martha Washington cake. Now my tomorrow is not defined by the crickets' incessant song as the sun comes up or by the planes coming in for a landing into the sunset, one by one. It is my husband's hand holding mine, reassuring me he will be there tomorrow, and the tomorrow after. 

Lebanon will always have a special place in my heart. It was where I grew up, where I learned what heartbreak was, where I stepped over the threshold into adulthood. Yet most of all, Lebanon is special because she taught me how to love. I learned to open my heart and here, in the land where I thought my life had ended, 20 years later, it began. With a man who saw me and knew—he loved me. 

I will carry you with me. Forever. 

True Religion is This. . .

I slip an extra pound note into his hand and watch as Radjo, the gas station attendant, adds it to the stack of paper bills he holds to make change for customers. I hope he gets the tip. I hope it helps him in some small way even though with inflation now, it will be just enough for a bag of bread. I hope he understands that I am not trying to buy his loyalty to get a full gas tank when others are just getting a quarter or so because of fuel rationing. 

I give freely because I want to give, not because I am a millionaire but because my heart is broken by the sadness I encounter every day. Young men digging through putrid garbage trying to find a bite to bring home to their families. Mothers with little ones on their knee as they sit sweltering in the summer sun by the side of the road and wait for a handout from a passerby. I carry food bags in my car to hand out where I can, not because I expect anything in return, but because I am loyal to helping others. 

And therein is the catch. Sometimes loyalty can be bought. If you have enough money, if you have enough pull to give privileges in your sphere of influence, you can give it away “like it’s extra change,” always knowing there will be something coming back your way in return. 

The paradigm that I grew up with, while I understand it, goes against everything I believe in. It’s almost as if I can feel the atoms in my body linking hands, resolutely refusing in solidarity to approve of it. I hesitate to take. But I never stop giving. It is what God asked me to do, to share my bread with the hungry and give clothes to those who need them (Isaiah 58:7). Perhaps this is why God describes this type of giving as true Christianity. Because He knew that if I gave to those who could not give in return, I would understand what true loyalty is.

Shrouded Paths

I don't trust God. I'm honest about it.

Please help me to trust You more.

If God was taking care of my worries, I wouldn't be here.

It seems God does answer prayers. 

The see-saw goes up. And down. And up. And down. Each time it swings one way, my fragile trust seems to swing with it. Like the simple folk in Jesus' time, when I see a miracle, I believe. When life gets too difficult; I lose all hope. 

The day started out rough. I'd been up for more than 2 hours in the middle of the night worrying. Worrying about fuel, worrying about groceries, worrying about health, worrying about the economic situation, worrying about family, worrying about our future. Off I went to work, in my usual foul mood as Monday mornings and first official day back to the office were not a good mix. I unlocked the front door to the building, wondering how I had managed to be the first to arrive. After logging into my email and quickly scrolling through headers, I realized why. Today was a holiday. It had been announced late Sunday evening. So, everyone else, who dutifully checked work email over the weekends and late at night, had slept in while I had dutifully come in to work. Alone. 

I had a lot to catch up on after a month away so I started working through emails. Soon enough, there was chatter in the hallways as those without a life started to trickle in, dealing with emergencies or simply feeling important. I kept my door closed and ignored the small hubbub outside. 

Later that afternoon, as campus residents exchanged commiserations in a WhatsApp group about the heat and lack of a/c because we were on generator power again, my husband sent a picture of three loose wires sticking out of our living room wall. Here is our air conditioner he joked after remarking that we knew for the past 2 years how hot it could get. Moments later he received a private message from the powers-that-be informing him that this was not the channel to complain in. He was not complaining. He was simply stating a fact. But the higher-ups, seemingly embarrassed, chose to make him feel bad when we had been silently suffering for the last two years through the insufferable summer heat. 

I sent an email. The powers-that-be, after I had sent countless emails, suddenly said there would be an a/c installed that week. Whether it was my friend who had been telling everyone he met that we were the only apartment on campus without a/c or whether it was my husband's innocent joke, somehow the a/c was magically materializing. Too little, too late, however. 

I sent a list of things that I was thankful for, in our group family chat. I had resolved to stop burdening my mother with my worries, none of which she could do anything about and would end up just being internalized which was not healthy for her. Even as I typed, I thought, Am I trusting God more because the a/c is suddenly being installed? Or do I trust God less because it wasn't here when the heat was beating down and my husband was recovering from surgery, alone, in a room with just a fan? 

I didn't have an answer. 

As I bumped along on my transatlantic flight the week before, I had felt particularly close to God. I had seen Him working it out so I could board my flights, albeit without the requisite QR code on my negative PCR test, and I was trusting He would get me home safely as I prayed each time I undertook the long journey from coast to coast. Then I landed in the hellhole I had left just a month prior, only now it seemed 10x worse, and fear and anxiety overwhelmed me. I cried, I journaled, I read my Bible, I vented to my mom and sister, I got upset with my husband, and through it all, I questioned my faith. I lay in bed that night thinking, I don't even have that mustard seed of faith. 

It was true. I'd told my husband at suppertime, as I cried into my cucumber sandwich, I don't see any hope! Trapped by circumstances, there seemed to be precious little left to hang one's hopes on. Fun activities, intriguing ethnic restaurants, jovial outings, jaunty international trips, even simple things like a carton of soymilk had all vanished overnight to be replaced with heat, isolation, uncertainty, and crisis after crisis. I had depleted my emotional resources long ago, as I stood frozen in the pasta aisle in the grocery store, unable to make a simple decision as to which pasta to buy because THERE WAS NO CHEAP PASTA ANYMORE. 

I compared my month in sunny, though smoky, California with my dreary life in Lebanon and my soul shriveled up inside. Two more years of this seemed impossible. Even counting down the days seemed endless. Then after this, there were 6 more years of enslavement to the system as indentured servants. 8 more years. 8 more years struggling to find a speck of hope; an eyelash of purpose; a spot of joy. 

This life is taking all my energy just to survive. So don't be surprised if I retreat from all responsibilities and from most of life. I'm just trying to manage. Trying to find a reason for trust. Because this faith? It's brittle and fragile as century-old parchment from Pharaoh's tomb. 

He tears me down on every side till I am gone; He uproots my hope like a tree. ~Job 19:10