The Jumbled Ache of War
I am about to type a sentence and I feel silly even allowing my brain to tell my fingers to do so…. nonetheless, here goes.
This week has broken my heart once again.
I type that as I sit in my nice house, with a glass of tea on my desk, uninterrupted internet on my computer, and a cat in my lap.
No missiles landing in the street outside. No air sirens going off in my city. No fear of losing my life, or my family losing theirs from the military invasion of a madman.
Since Monday I have had this feeling that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was a feeling I had felt before, but I just couldn’t quite remember when or where, or why? Then it hit me on Wednesday night.
Hearing the news that Russian troops were advancing into Ukraine, and watching the airstrikes immediately brought the memories flooding back.
Mid-January 1991 I sat in the house of my boyfriend’s parents, his brothers, their wives all gathered around the television. Some of us were on the floor, some on chairs and couches, the kids in the other room playing (oblivious to how the world they would now grow up in was being shaped). We were watching Operation Desert Storm begin and it was terrifying. I remember my chest being tight, the continual lump in my throat and the hot tears constantly resting precariously under my eyelids for weeks.
Helpless.
This week I have been feeling those exact feelings, only much more pronounced. And much more of a sense of helplessness as I watch fathers kiss their families goodbye, place them on buses and in cars, and send them away, not knowing if they will see one another again. My heart aches and I want to do something, anything, to fix this.
War is not new. I would say that Cain and Abel are a good representation of what ‘war’ looked like all the way ban in the beginning. And wars of varying degree have raged on for generations. They will continue to do so, should the Lord tarry, for generations to come.
That doesn’t make them right or easy to understand. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love, support, and enter into helping in whatever humanitarian ways we are able. And while the hands-on, tangible ways of assistance are available, it also doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be crying out to God with our hearts and hurts. When we cannot be right next to someone helping carry their physical burdens and heartaches, we ought to find ourselves on our knees and in conversation with the Peacemaker. Asking for direction and guidance in how to serve and love well those far off, and those in our communities.
These are a jumble of words – I know that. These are my feelings falling out of my brain and trying to land on the screen in some way that documents what is happening right now and how I am processing. Maybe you are feeling the same way. Maybe none of us know how we are feeling. I hope we will all make a note of our hearts, our heads, and our soul’s conditions in the right now.
As I heard today, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. So let us make note of the events of the moment.
