Being Agile...

Sitting with my closest Syrian friend and hearing that she is moving camps, she is moving from the neighbors I know and love,  that have become her family. They make food with her and do lessons with her, and take care of her kids when she is working in the fields long summer days. They know the ins and outs of her life for the past two years …separated only by a thin sheet of canvas.

 Feeling so many emotions. Relieved and so so happy that she will not have to work in the fields in this new camp she has found. The chief of the camp she is living in right now has forces her to work for next to nothing, even though she has small children.  She is ready to be done with that.

  Watching woman after woman come into her tent to say goodbye and some holding back tears, others openly crying. She is honest, she is kind, and she is helpful and generous. If she ever has extra she gives it away, she helps women when they need it most.

   The kids have fought and laughed and built memories with the other kids. They have been going to a school they love and will change schools now…

 They are choosing to be cheerful and optimistic. I join them in this and we talk through small details of moving, some of our first memories together, and thinking of what her new life will look and feel like.

 For a people who normally lived on the land with their families and never move, this transient lifestyle is unheard of. They always had more than enough, and had weekly traditions of gathering at their parents’ house and all the sisters cooking together for the huge Friday meal, they have had to endure so much change. So much shaking. They have had to be agile and resilient in a way that I pray does not break them.

 They flee and settle into a camp here and are forced to live near people they have never known and listen to fights or work out intense situations while others listen. They snap and they help. They grieve together over losses and exchange stories of what they hear are happening back in their beloved land.

 And all the change, it is hard on my heart. It is hard for me to see them uprooted again. Not that I want them to stay in the midst of this struggle. No…I want certainty, I want work, and I want the fear of not having enough that has become their daily reality to be forever gone. But I also want consistency and friendship, community and roots for them. Sigh.

 In the daily grind of watching my friends survive, things can begin to feel normal.  It shifts from crisis to tonight’s dinner. From we fled, to this is their homework. But the veil is thin, and just when things can begin to feel settled or normal something shifts and feels like you are starting back over.

 But this is the emotion of a friend, not a distant worker who hands them things and walks away. It is because I have sat in her home for over a year, know her friends and life, rejoiced at the school for her kids, and the jobs her husband has had off and on.

  Agility, being flexible. Believing and hoping…name of the game in this scene.

reading through scripture this week about God's promise to be close to those who trust in His name.

" the eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, His ears are open to their cries for help...
The Lord is close to the broken hearted, he rescues those whose spirit's are crushed. " psalm 34:15, 18