sevgili kızım KISKARDISH

 sevgili kızım KISKARDISH,

Keeping this mostly in English, tamam?

    I was thinking about how much we communicate and write our dear ones while they are away. It can be hard. Having left the family unit for months and months at a time myself, I look back and reflect on how some members of the family it was harder to keep in touch with. This is natural. It is hard to maintain contact with all our loved ones on a daily and even weekly basis. Like cousins, aunts and uncles, and other family, our own siblings and parents, it grows difficult to maintain a steady relationship through emails or phone calls, even in this age of ubiquitous technology and communication.

    The last time I was away significantly (two years ago), I realized that I was coming up short, so I began to write a letter on MS Word documents describing my feelings and thoughts. Trying to reach out. Sometimes I would doubt how effective that was, as sometimes or many times I would get little or no feedback from those letters.

    But, at least I (the writer) should have many of those documents as a permanent record like a journal. Sometimes the main audience that we are communicating with is God and ourselves. And that is okay. Tiyep, tamam, eeyim. Al hamdu illah.

    It is not easy to be consistently strong in communicating in any forum or method, be it personal prayers, phone calls, texts and written letters. There is only so much time, a precious resource that can slip through the funnels of the hourglass.

    Alas, there is so much to conquer! (Alexander the Great wept for there was "nothing" left to conquer...)

    Talking to a person yesterday who may have to take long PCS's (Permanent Change of Station) from his family, I admitted to him that on my times and missions away from the family it could be very hard to connect and communicate with all. With my youngest daughter on my last one, only a couple of years ago, she would do FaceTime with me while running through endless silly filters. She would laugh and play. I would stand by, and sometimes watch, but sometimes read or see some other thing on my phone or laptop. Perhaps I wrote a blog piece or another family letter. She and I communicated in our own ways.

    I think that God can be like that with us. He has the power to listen and communicate with us in His own way, while we might toil or play or dally about.

    None of us mortals are perfect, that is for sure.

    All that to say that we love you and celebrate you, you come up in conversations and thoughts, and you are a part of us and our lives even though we may not express daily or regularly.

    You are love and highly thought of, much how Jesus and Heavenly Father keep tabs on us. Sometimes they are there to lean on, and other times they give us free reign to soar or wallow.

    Their Spirit is always available, and the spirit of the love and union with your family is always so, no matter how many words flow.

    Ana bahubukee katheeran. Dai'mon. Always. Documented in script or not.

    Gunayden and shabbat shalom.

    ----Baban