Lots of Thoughts~

It has been hard to write recently because I feel like my writing has to be edited and perfect if I am going to post it. So I decided to just not write, because I don’t want to keep my thoughts private- because they are things I’d like to be able to share- but I don’t want to have to make them sound nice.

So here I go again, writing like I am just writing for me (and in a sense, I am). So I’m sorry if you read this through and have no idea what I was talking about. In reality I don’t really know what I’m talking about either.

These past few weeks here have been difficult because I have been feeling flooded with unaddressed emotions from my trip to Palestine. As I watch the news, read the articles, and communicate with the friends that I have been fortunate enough to remain in contact with, my heart hurts with the heaviness of the current situation in Palestine-Israel. With every child that is orphaned, every mother that loses a child, every family left homeless, there is an anger that is fueled in me. Every time there’s a bombing or a stabbing or a body that someone refuses to return to their mourning family, I just don’t understand why this is happening- I mean, I understand WHY it’s happening but not why it could be let to continue. I feel like during my senior year (while I was researching for my senior project, which was centered around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict), God began to help me see that being ‘Pro-Palestine’ or ‘Pro-Israel’, was choosing to be ‘Pro-Conflict’, because being for one side is to be against the other. I think that God then asked me to shift my view from being pro-one side, to pro-people, pro-love, and pro-reconciliation. There are people in Israel, and there are people in Palestine. People are God’s children. I am called to love God’s children. But how? I am angry that the world isn’t seeing the reality of what is going on in this region, but I also know that God is the only one who can calm it. So in my anger, I do have hope... But it is an impatient hope, because I want God to intervene and invade now.

Working in collaboration with this specific anger inside of me, is the anger of the recent terror attacks that have taken place in Baghdad, Beirut, and Paris. Here is a list of what makes me mad about the situation, because my brain functions better when I use lists.

1. I am angry that it happened. Point blank, things like this are a clear sign of the evil that is in our world.
2. I am angry that the terror attacks that happened in Beirut and Baghdad right around the same time that the Paris terror attack happened, have not been given near as much attention.
3. I am angry that I have seen friends of mine, and just people in general lash out against the Muslim population as a whole- as if every Muslim on earth is now evil because one EXTREMIST group is terrorizing and threatening many people/places in the world. This makes me very sad, as I can say with 100% certainty that not all Muslims are terrorists, not by a very (very) long shot.
4. Finally, I am just heartbroken for the Arab refugees fleeing for their lives, who will now be turned away or denied the opportunity to seek refuge in another country.

I can honestly say now that I have finished this, I do feel a little bit better. But I think that I have realized that my anger in general is that (it seems to me) many people are choosing to turn a blind eye to so many horrible things that are happening right now.