When Grief Knocks: The Weight of Sacrifice and Survival in Israel

All morning I’m frozen, sick to my stomach. I can still hear her tears through my phone, her gasping echoing through my mind. Calling to tell me about another lost friend. The second this morning.

So many soldiers dead.

Men in the prime of their lives; fathers and sons, leaving behind widows and orphans, 4 children, 8 children… how many more?

I know that army unit has been going around our neighborhoods knocking on doors. That knock that everyone dreads. Israel is cracking under the breathless shock that comes with losing so many of our sons.

My window is open and I hear another woman screaming into the street. She is screaming, “Abba! Abba!” and I can’t close the window because I need to bear witness to her pain.

I don’t know where she is, or which windowsill is sagging under the weight of her wailing but I feel it rocking through me, holding my breath hostage.

We’re breaking all over again. I don’t even know these people - these families.

I don’t need to.

Here we are all woven together; our lifeblood flows through our streets, tying together families, communities, and loss.

There are so many of our enemies that are trying to wipe us from this land.

Trying to take it from us, to dispel us back to the four corners of the Earth. The corners that it took thousands of years to traverse till we could come back home.

But this land asks of us sacrifice- and there are certain sacrifices that we make gladly.

But this?

This we can’t understand at all.

This has us screaming to the heavens - why them?

Tens of Israelis rammed by a truck on the first regular day we’ve had in a month.

Why so much blood?

Why so much terror?

How much more do You think we can take?