Reflections

The year is nearly over.

I sit beside my fireplace with a pot of coffee brewing. The snow gleams outside in the sharp winter air.

This is not Arizona.

The whole landscape of my life has changed, and not just externally.

Last January, about this time, started thinking about going to work in a field hospital in a war zone. That decision led to so many other new and unexpected things that it’s hard to look back and understand exactly what has happened in these twelve months.

More than anything, I think, this year has made me grateful. Grateful for good friends, supportive family and the opportunities with which I have been blessed. Also, for perhaps the very first time in my life, being single has come to feel like that gift that married people always talk about in church. I’ve nothing against married people at church, but they do seem to talk a lot about this subject without much experience…anyway.

Being unattached even feels a little bit selfish at times. For those of you who are single and don’t feel this way, trust me, I understand. I’ve spent most of my adult life without being in a romantic relationship, knowing that I have so much to offer, but with nothing promising on the horizon. I know all about long days of Netflix alone and random wandering through coffee shops in the hopes that you might turn someone’s head—although its unlikely because everyone now has their head buried in laptop and headphones or cellphone. At times, the thought of spending the rest of my life without that “special someone” to remember my birthday, etc. felt like the worst prison sentence in the world. And that whole “it’s a gift from God” idea made me want to hit some people in the face a few times. (I never did)

This year changed all of that for a variety of reasons. Perhaps, some of it comes from simple maturity. Being on the other side of thirty I like to think I’ve gained a little bit of emotional fortitude and stability that was simply unattainable at twenty or twenty-five.

Apart from that, I was able to pick up and leave my job when I heard God call me to go to Iraq. And that being called, so clearly and resolutely, shoved everything else into second place. I was ready to die if that was what was required. I don’t say this to sound somehow holy or righteous, but just to explain that I had a cause, a reason to exist that was entirely outside of myself. Nothing can match that. In my mind, no human being on the planet could be worth missing out on that feeling. All you need is love, the song says. But I think all you really need is to be love. That is what makes life worth living.

Secondly, while I was in Iraq, I saw the toll being a mother takes on a woman. It’s an entire life of selflessness, being held at the mercy, sometimes unwillingly, of a tiny, fretful, fearful human being who doesn’t understand anything except its own needs. Of course I still love babies, and if the opportunity arose, I might gather up the courage to have one myself. But right now, I very much enjoy the fact that I can sleep in on my days off, only have to worry about washing my own clothes, and can choose to eat ice cream and chips for dinner if I like without worrying about setting a bad example. For you mothers, whether your babies are grown or still waking up in the middle of the night, you are amazing. Maybe you have found your calling in raising children, and if you have, then you should understand the amazing feeling of being able to do what you love.

For you single women (and men if you happen to read this), I don’t suggest that you try to pull on your big girl (or boy) boots and just deal like a happy human when you feel alone and forgotten. It’s almost impossible to do. But I do suggest that you first put your focus on God, and second, find something that you love to do. Not because it brings you close to possible mates (see, I have been there—I know how you think), but because you love doing it, because it gives your life meaning and glorifies God. That looks different for everyone. Maybe you clean houses for the elderly or cook meals for the sick or take a frazzled mother of three out for coffee. Whatever it is, find it and run with it until God gives you something else. And He will, because He is good. His plan is perfect, and He loves you.

All of these things, and so many others, made me realize that I like not having roots. I like being able to go where I’m called. It would take a very, very patient and persistent man to keep up with me. (Not to mention put up with all of my weird) I don’t know if such a man exists. I don’t know if he should. All I know is that I am glad to be who I am and where I am.

Next year is nearly here.

I wait eagerly to see what it brings.

~~~

Isaiah 43:4

Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you

Impressions of Mosul through the Eyes of an Observer

Bombs drop through hazy air
Onto streets already full of rubble
On homes and people
Huddled together inside walls
That fall and shatter and turn to dust
While outside the battle rages
They remain
Prisoners of their own law
Turned sour and rancid
Destroying hope and peace
In one swift move
The bullets fly
Across the water
A girl stumbles to the ground
The air, hot and dry,
Fills with smoke and sand
Thick as the choking lies
That make these men despise each other
Each life
And here is the safe place
Built on the rock
Creating a beachhead 
Untouchable, irrefragable
On the plains of Nineveh
The temporary is shaking to pieces
As the bombs fall
And only the permanent remains

Notes from a War Zone

I've spent the last month in an emergency field hospital (EFH) located near the ongoing battle against Daesh (ISIS) in Mosul, Iraq. And, not surprisingly, it's been a difficult month, both in ways I expected but also in ways I did not.

The gore and trauma, for instance, was a given. Otherwise, what would be the point of a flying thousands of miles to a field hospital? And the gunshots and sounds of mortars and explosions in the distance were also fairly routine.

But there were other things that took my by complete surprise, like the sucker-punch attack of self-doubt in the middle of the first few days that made me certain I had been wasting my life up to that moment because everyone around me was so much more exciting and so much more interesting and definitely prettier (for what that matters). Or the boy who I cared for all shift without trouble until I suddenly realized he was the same age as my youngest brother, and I didn't think he was going to make it through the week.

All of these things combined to make this one of the most difficult experiences of my life. And now that I'm leaving it all behind, I feel almost as if I've taken the easy way out since there is still so much work to be done.

Almost daily since the beginning of this trip, I've had to remind myself that God called me to this place. Me. And I followed his voice. And I am enough. I am enough to do the task he has given me, because he has prepared me for it and because his strength continues to fill me. I am never alone.

The other thing to remember is that God is in control. He's in control when the child is miraculously unharmed by the bullet that went through his neck. And he's in control when an eight-year old loses both legs. And he's still in control when a ten-year old dies from wounds sustained while fleeing Mosul with his family.

These are hard lessons to remember. Hard things to live through. Especially when combined with sleep deprivation and the overload of having to learn fifty new names in a day. But leaving is even more difficult.

Here, in the middle of chaos and the unknown, I have felt more at peace with God than I have for years. The difference I can make here is so evident that it's almost tangible.

Going home I have to remind myself that I am not really leaving the war zone. Although there may not be mortars dropping on my hometown or bunkers and barricades and soldiers surrounding my bedroom, my town is no less a war zone than Mosul. Some of the wounds that people sustain here---that we treat in the EFH---are obvious, easily identified, but they carry inside them the exact same brokenness as every single man, woman and child in the USA who doesn't know Christ.

This whole world is a war zone, and the enemy---crafty and clever as he is---uses different tactics on different fronts, but that does not change who he is or his ultimate goal. In Mosul, the enemy uses Daesh to destroy hope and take lives. In America, he is so much more subtle. He uses social media, drugs, pride and even education in an attempt to destroy our ability to believe our only hope of salvation.

I suppose that is why, even when I've seen the children who've been shot by snipers, that I can't feel anger toward Daesh. All I feel for them is sorrow. I truly do not comprehend the kind of brokenness that would lead someone to shoot at women and children. So, please, if you are reading this, take a moment to pray. Pray for Iraq and it's people---the rich and the refugees. Pray for Daesh---that their guns would miss and their souls would be saved. Pray for America and its decadent decay, and pray for those of us who are living in the middle of it all just trying to save a life.

Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” 

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

Psalm 42:7-11