Could you have told me what it would look like today? The world I mean, the one we live in, the one I love, the Arab one and the other ones, my homes, the ones that will be and the others that just might.
 
I’m sure even then, I wouldn’t have known, to expect the change, the randomness of rampant anger, the shifting forces, changing guaranties, the pain.
 
Wouldn’t have known to expect the impact of choices, large ones, broadcasted only after they’d been made.
 
Wouldn’t have changed my surprise at the headlines brash, crass, crude and sure.
 
My mind racing, contingency plan tracing, forgetting names and places all chosen in quiet moments and restful phases.
 
Wouldn’t have seen it coming, that friend’s message saying: Praying, You okay? … and my dad calling, unusually, in the middle of the day.
 
A rocket and a drone where there should have been none.
After all it was just a week… but what a di􀆯erence a single one has done.
 
Flying Turkish out of the Arab World,
I’m grieving hope, the kind that is sure of the world improving, young and bright, excited for the better to come.
 
Inherent Goodness, my world-view-lens, has a crack, a split, not quite a shatter.
 
I’m grieving the things I had wished for like justice and wholeness,
the flourishing that could have been,
for me, for them,
for today and tomorrow,
for a life and history less marked by sorrow.
 
But reality looks different,
it’s visible on an airplane map, a pixelated world shift a few miles west, just above Cairo.
East, that’s where we should have been, Cyprus what we should have seen.
But no, not today, there’s an angle in a straight line, a Nile Delta and an island-less Mediterranean ahead.
 
There is pain in that,
that curve in my flight trajectory.
Pain in the unexpected safe lines and boundaries overstepped.
Pain in change and war.
Destruction where I prayed for transformation.
This is not what I thought we were pushing for.
I’m sad,
And tired,
And shocked, delayed senses catching up,
And tears don’t seem to need a reason.
 
But it’s just a curve on a grainy plane map.
How many tears could that deserve?
 
Many, a few, sixteen of them, four full hours in the air?
Praying reminders while crying that God is just in a life that does not seem fair.
 
The overhead safety announcements carry on and the only one lamenting is… me… the non-Arab, non-Muslim, non-resident friend in 28G.
 
And despite my lack of understanding, it’s still the same world, same word, same promise, good father, allin, till-the-last-one, Great-I-Am, keep-my-word, relentless pursuer, victorious-forever same God, that God, my God, the one I know, the one who is never late to the show.
 
Even though this still feels far removed from heaven.
 
So, I’ll hold a funeral for my expectations,
and rest the tears that have been shed.
I’ll sing my faith still dressed in mourning, trying and learning, meek and inconstant, just one verse strong, a Proverbs 31.25 woman, one who can laugh at the days to come.
I’ll put on armour, the full one and take my stand.
Pick up my hope, not dead, though battered and bruised,
For the nations and a gathering that is still to be done.
 
And though I long for beauty and healing, for safety and freedom without refrain, an end to all brokenness, want restoration, rejoicing and wholesome change,
I’ll take anticipation for the holiness of heaven, to be enough for today.
 
A few thousand feet of the ground, not quite here and not quite there,
sure, that this world is still carried and known,
and that one day this place of breaking
will be redeemed, whole, healed and fully home.