Here

"All good. I'm here."

--What I didn't know I had been needing to hear, for so long.

Love

"The best thing about teaching is the kids, and I totally understand how a teacher would give her life for her students."

--My mother, 5th-grade school teacher

Om El Donia

"Reading about Egypt while listening to "Your Love Is Strong" by Jon Foreman. This is my life. Caught between total chaos and Your infinite grace.

Always two extremes, two identities, the two sides of being attached to one country and growing up in another. The spiritual and the political.

The duplicity of irreversibility.

Whatever I am, whatever You made me, You are pleased with it and not done yet. Thankful for Your foresight and sovereignty."


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--Some of my tweets from yesterday, December 4th, 2012, in light of the increasing rioting in Egypt against the authoritative Muslim Brotherhood.

Truth & Lies

Every time my dad acts like he doesn't care about Egypt anymore, I can see through him when he sits down and turns on the Arabic tv. Glued, completely focused, so concerned it makes me worry for him.

I don't understand why we have to pretend.

on my way

You know, I'm okay with it.

I'm okay with the fact that  that I took a chance. I like that I did. It didn't work out, you wouldn't let it work out, even though you didn't exactly say that in so many words.

I'm still proud of myself. I did a big-girl thing. I am strong. I am.

I don't know where this is going, or if we meet up, what we're gonna say....what I'm gonna say.

And I'm not going to act like I don't still care about you.....a lot.

But it happened. And although it hurts, I would have regretted a lot more not taking a chance.

Life will go on. In some direction. I just don't know which yet.

On Trust and Love

I have a friend. She is really hard to deal with, and has been for the majority of her life. I don't think she will change, and I think she has a lot of pain that she has to deal with. I state this not as a judgement or an opinion, but as a statement of fact. It is what it is.

I have another friend that was in a relationship with her years ago. After some conversation about friend #1, and what we could do to help her, the ideas about trust and love came up. I've been thinking about both of these ideas a lot lately, but I also think they are commonly in our thoughts as human beings.

Trust is important. It's super important, especially in relationships (and when I say relationships, I mean them in a very wide sense, including friendships). I think that if you don't have trust, you can't have a functional relationship. You just can't.

I believe love is the strongest force in the universe. I am a Christian, and as a follower of Jesus I am continually amazed by all that love has conquered and how we see that woven throughout the entire life of Christ and story of the bible.

But in terms of relationships, trust is at least as important as love. I don't say this as the final authority on the subject, as I'm not married and not in any serious relationship. But I do think that observations and what experience we do have can take us a long way. Over the summer, especially in terms of my relationship with Christ, I began to see love as a commitment, a choice that you choose time and time again, regardless of circumstance. I choose to love God by thanking Him for being Who He is, regardless of the good or bad happening in my life at that time. And I imagine that when the time is right, I will choose to wake up next to my husband every morning, I will choose to be patient with him, I will choose to serve him and our kids. Because love is a choice, a commitment that you must choose. And out of that commitment comes trust.

Trust is a natural response to love. I will trust you when I believe that you will stand by me, because of what your past actions have shown. Love is so, so strong; it crosses oceans and makes distance obsolete. It makes us brave. It gives us hope. But trust is what cements these great things that love starts. Love doesn't lack, at least not the perfect love that the bible describes. But I think it's safe to think of trust as an extension of love, as a manifestation of it. Because it's a response, it has its beginnings, its cause, rooted in love.

Where there is trust, there is love.

scars

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are sealed with scars."   

--Khalil Gibran

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I know I've been quiet, and I didn't exactly intend on doing that. I wasn't intending to start a blog and then neglect it. I always have a lot to say, but I don't always know how to say it. I think I'm just in a season of soaking in and being quiet, and soon I'll have something to give back out. But for now, I have to trust that this is what I need and that this is good for me and okay for me to have.

I also just want to say, I really think Khalil Gibran got a few things right.