All Things New~

This has been a month full of newness. New country, new family, new social expectations, new foods, new people, new environment, and new discoveries. In 4 weeks, it has been a lot of ‘new’ to take in. As an outsider, learning to live and to function in a society under occupation has been the biggest struggle for me. Witnessing racism and human right violations, and seeing people live with a sense of fear is so hard to see. However, at the same time, these same people open their homes to foreigners, pour out generosity, smile and laugh and live fully- and this juxtaposition has been very emotionally taxing. There have been days since I arrived here that I have been so angry and so sad, and the questions of ‘How could the world let this happen, where one people group controls and abuses another?’ and ‘How can people who have been deeply mistreated, still live with such kindness, and for the most part a lack of bitterness?’ continue to revolve inside my head. With the anger and the sadness comes a type of guilt that I haven’t had before, and so I feel like inside of me a disconnect has formed between these deep and new emotions, and my ability to express them. So I will take to writing, which sometimes is a good way to let everything out and to organize thoughts (which I have many of).

I feel guilty as an outsider. I come in and I tour refugee camps, I walk through villages that face eviction, I listen to people speak about their personal struggles. I come and then I go. I can’t help but wonder what these people are thinking when they see a bus full of internationals coming to look around their homes, almost as if it’s a tourist attraction. The image that comes to mind when I think about this is a zoo. Zoos are filled with interesting and exotic creatures, and you go to a zoo so that you can see animals that you wouldn’t just ‘happen’ to see walking down the street in everyday life. You go up to the exhibit, you take a few pictures of the animal, and sometimes you might read the little description beneath the glass that tells you the animal’s name, where it is found, if it was bred in captivity or not. Sometimes you leave with a burning passion to study zoology, because the animals that you saw were so fascinating and cool that you want to know more. But a couple of hours later, a couple of days later, there are no more thoughts about the animals you saw. Maybe you kept the pictures you took, but maybe they get deleted. You come and then you go. You come to learn more, to feel like you’re involved and you promise yourself that you are going to do something about what you’ve experienced, but more than likely you won’t. I cannot imagine what that would feel like to another human being, to be treated- not intentionally, but never the less- as a zoo exhibit.

I feel guilty as a Westerner. I have never had to worry about someone shutting off the water to my house in the summer. I haven’t had to worry about my heating being shut down in the winter. It was never dangerous for me to walk to school in the mornings. I have never had anyone in my family taken to jail without a legitimate reason.  One thing that I was made very aware of in my second week here was that I have more freedom of movement in Palestine and Israel than the Palestinians do. When I want to go into Israel, I don’t need a special permit. I don’t have to get off the bus at the checkpoint to be questioned and searched. I get to use all of the roads. I get to go to any religious or historic sight that I want. The Palestinians do not. So I was left with the realization that even though I have been in this country for less than a month, I have more freedom of movement than some people who have lived here all of their lives. I am having a hard time writing this right now, because this notion makes me angry. I am an eighteen year old American girl, who is just here for two months. How is it that I can move more freely than a man who has to cross the checkpoints separating Palestine and Israel everyday in order to work to support his family? I have no answers, but the injustice leaves me speechless.

I feel angry at God. "But I say to you, love your enemies and bless the one who curses you, and do what is beautiful to the one who hates you, and pray over those who take you by force and persecute you." {Matthew 5:44} ... But how? I have no real enemies, so in the past, this was an easy verse for me. In reality, I still have no real enemies. The occupiers of Palestine have never hurt me or my family, they’ve never mistreated me- in fact, I often get ‘special treatment’ because of my blonde hair, white skin, and green eyes. So if someone like me who has never been persecuted or mistreated doesn’t even want to forgive the people who have occupied this land and this people, how do the people that have actually been subjected to this injustice forgive? How does a good and a just and a kind and a loving and an all powerful God let this happen? But I think the beautiful thing about God is that he meets you in your anger. He meets you in your heartbreak, and he meets you when you are overwhelmed and confused. God is good. I know that, I feel that, and I believe that even when almost everything makes it seem like he is not. I am blessed to be here. I am blessed to have an amazing, generous, and kind host family. I am deeply blessed. So, to the God that has opened the doors for me to be here, who has surrounded me with people who help me process these feelings, who has allowed me to make some pretty awesome friends here, who has reminded me time and time and time again that when I feel like I am falling apart, his love has not left me, in him my heart and my soul (no matter how chaotic they feel) always find rest. The song verse “Then sings my soul, my savior God to Thee, how great Thou art? How great Thou art?” is really resonating with me at the moment, because even though I feel guilty, angry, sad, and confused, I can come back and be ‘anchored’ in the fact that God is good. This doesn’t imply that I don’t still wonder why this could be allowed to happen. I still struggle when I question why God would let this come to pass. I would love to have all the answers, and to know the reasons behind everything- but that’s not how faith works. So while I continue to live here, and I continue to feel like I am an exploding ball of emotions, and I continue to figure out how to live in a place where people are being ‘born in captivity’, I hope my soul will still sing of God’s greatness. 

So if you read this all the way through, I’m sorry for how crazy and disorganized this was, but thank you for looking through my thoughts.