I can only control this moment

It has been one week of sirens, shelters, and the sound of explosions over our heads.

I get messages asking me how I’m doing, how I’m feeling.

And honestly? For me personally, I’m trying to turn the intensity down on my emotionality.

I feel a lot of things all the time.

I learned a long time ago that fear will choke you.

Worry will ruin your life, making it hard to breathe.

Hope can sustain you till it flickers. Then it’s hard to get back.

But certainty- for me that’s the goal. That’s where I’m putting my emotional energy.

I spend plenty of time with fear and stress and hope. Joy even visits me from time to time.

But I find that certainty is quieter. Smoother to swallow. Keeps my breathing even and deep.

I can’t control the cluster b*mbs over our heads that sound like microwave popcorn bursting- except you can feel each crack rupture through your chest, through the walls of the shelter.

I can’t control the timing of when the sirens blare- as much as I try to time showers, oven, and needing to go to the grocery store.

I’m finding that the louder it gets in the sky, the more the heavens roar with danger, the more I feel the need to surrender to the one who neither slumbers or sleeps.

People ask how we’re managing, and I say, “Hour by hour. Day by day.”

I can only control this moment.

The challah I make for my family for Shabbat.

That cup of tea I bring into the shelter.

That text message to check in on my friend.

And when I drift off and I let my thoughts go-they don’t want to be here. Now.

I’m thinking about the after.

About what things will be like when there will be peace.

The feeling of freedom from worry, of closure, of growth.

No more propaganda. No more lies.

Just the quiet rebuilding of the world we’ve been dreaming about from inside these shelters.

And so I return to certainty.

Not certainty about what tomorrow will bring.

Not certainty about when the sirens will sound again.

But certainty about who we are, and why we are still here.

We will keep building lives in this ancient place that is our home.

And one day, maybe sooner than we dare to believe, the sky will finally grow quiet again.

From Israel, Shabbat Shalom.