Higher Than Me

As our plane took off on Saturday night – a chartered flight organised by the British government to rescue its citizens from the war in Israel – I broke down in tears.

For the first time since the war began, I allowed myself the luxury of weeping – deep, heavy sobs from the bottom of my lungs. I no longer tried to rein in the tears as I had done all week in case they alerted the children to the seriousness of the situation, or in case the depth of my grief prevented me from thinking clearly and acting fast.

As we rose high above the flickering lights of roads, cars and houses, I was overcome with sorrow for the suffering of the people in this beautiful land.

I wept for all the parents, children, old and young who had woken up a week before, thinking it was going to be an ordinary Shabbat, only to find themselves within a split second in the middle of one of the most brutal massacres the world has ever seen.

As a mother myself, it was the stories of the children that really ripped me apart, and their parents who died trying to protect them, with no success.

As I sat on the plane, I found myself saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again. I felt so guilty to be leaving my people in Israel now. That I was on a plane to safety when so many of them never had the chance. That so many families in Israel were walking out a living hell with loved ones held hostage in Gaza, with sons and daughters fighting and dying on the front lines, with rockets and sirens and chaos and terror. “I’m so so sorry, Israel, that I’m leaving you now.”

As I wept, my seven year old daughter sitting next to me didn’t ask me why. She just quietly started to sing her own made-up song. “Mummy, it’s ok, your little girl is with you now. Your daughter loves you and you don’t need to be in pain.”

This was the little girl who had been screaming in panic just a few hours earlier because she was so terrified of the war, the little girl who I hadn’t been able to properly hold or comfort because I was just so desperate to get us on the flight.

Later, when we got to England, and after I unfroze, I would thank my daughter for her aeroplane song. I would wrap my arms around her and hold her tight until she felt safe again.

But I would also think about those other mothers in southern Israel who had no power to keep their children safe, however tightly they held them.

Just this morning I read a report about the forensic pathologists working to identify human remains from the massacre. They came across a form so disfigured that it was only when they did a CT scan that they realised it was two separate bodies: an adult and a child hugging each tightly as they burnt to death.

Beloved Israel, my heart is breaking for you.

I have an ocean of tears. Yet at the same time my tears feel like a luxury that I have no right to enjoy because here I am, safely away from the conflict, able to hug my two healthy children and help them know they’re safe.

I have no theology, no wisdom, no explanations for what has happened. Maybe I never will. I don’t feel any need or pressure to make sense of it. I don’t want to ask God why. Maybe I know that if I do, I will just get angry. But without trying to understand anything, I do feel a deep sense of God’s presence. That somehow in the darkness, He is holding my hand. And that He is weeping too.