Unmoored

I landed in Israel, and as Shabbat ended I learned that another sparkly, beautiful, too-short life had been ended by cancer.

I was filled with white-hot anger, with a terrible sad rage that I contained beneath dry eyes.

I love Israel. 

I love the Old City of Jerusalem.

I love the ancient stones and the way the sun turns them golden.

I do not feel any closer to God in Israel than I do anywhere else in the world.

I do not feel that my prayers at the Kotel, the Western Wall, are any more holy or heard any more loudly. I just don't feel that way.

In fact, I don't feel much at all when I go to the Kotel.

I marvel at the age of the wall, the way that the hands of the generations before me have smoothed them with their fingers. But I don't feel God there any more than I feel God elsewhere.

Random brick wall in Highland Park...

I contained my anger and sadness as I moved through most of the next day, conducting errands and ordering (lots of) coffee in my rusty Hebrew. And then I made my way through Jerusalem to the Old City. Almost on their own, my feet made their way to the Kotel. Like a woman on a bit of a mission, I headed straight for the Wall. 

And I gave God a piece of my mind.

The piece I've been aching to give for quite a while now. 

Very quietly, though, since I don't think that the worshippers at the Wall on that Sunday afternoon would have appreciated my searing fury. 

This was no dialogue. This was a monologue in which I screamed and swore and threatened and cried.

I do not have perfect faith.

I do not know how to talk to God right now. 

I most certainly have lost my politeness.

I don't know how to invite God back into the conversation. I am not ready.

I hate God, Sammy said to me.

I could have answered, "Me too."

I do hard things.

I walk forward in the world.
I am, for so many intents and purposes, not broken.

You would not know, to look at me, that I am unmoored from my relationship with God.

I move through each day, as I've done before.

That same afternoon, Michael texted me: "How's your heart feeling?"

Sad.

Aching.

No words can adequately explain the way my heart continues to hurt when I realize that school ends tomorrow and this year, this year that Sammy was a 2nd grader, is coming to an end without him...that the summer begins without him...that the next year will start without him...

My heart is shattered into so many pieces that I can't even begin to collect them all. 

And it's been 180 days.

Feather on the ground right outside the David Citadel Hotel, where we stayed with Sammy

Overlooking the Old City...