Change

I know this looks a lot like a few other pictures you've seen from my balcony... but it's not. The train that normally runs on these tracks is not running currently, and it is oddly quiet outside my flat. This is picture of the empty tracks.

When we were in Beirut, we heard a story from a friend about a night that a bomb dropped in his neighborhood during the 2006 war. He said the bomb dropped and then the odd thing was not how loud it was, but that for what felt like 10 seconds there was absolute silence... It was like the force of the hit vacuumed all the sound in.

Sometimes change can feel that way to me. As if something comes and then there is this very strange stillness. It's like something in me lays really still until I know what the effect of that change will be. Sometimes you get up and realize everything's OK and go on, and sometimes it's much harder.

I feel like big and little bombs have been dropping right and left in my life lately. So frequently that I am not sure that I have stopped laying really still. I have no chance in between hits to get up and check on myself or my surroundings. I am simply still here, on the ground, not moving and praying for the best.

Change is such a strange thing. It is assured, nothing stays the same, and often for the better. But the unknown so often brings uncertainty in us on the inside. I am ready for the world to go a little more calm and for the sound to return.

I have to admit, my heart is a bit achey tonight. In these moments I have to remind myself that the human spirit is brilliantly resilient and that all of life must be experienced with appropriate perspective. So here in the silence, I will think about my friends all over the world who are experiencing the true deafening silence of the world after bombs and remind myself that my world is small and simple and these little bombs falling in my life are, in the grand scheme of things, a mere inconvenience.