Blooming Through the War

This morning a friend told me a vivid story that is sticking with me, and I thought I'd retell it here. The story came out of the blue, just one of the stops on a wandering conversation about the stress an administrative or leadership job can lay at a person's doorstep.

"Sallie" grew up in Lebanon as the child of missionaries. When she was a young adult and the family was back in the United States, her family fell apart. Her parents divorced and stories emerged that caused the children shame and pulled them painfully back and forth between their parents' differing accounts of what the problems were and what had actually happened...and continued to happen.

Sallie ended up taking neither parent's side. It put her in a position to be vilified by the people in their community who had taken sides with one or the other of Sallie's parents, believing the other one to be lying. It was ugly. Sallie was not going to explain her stance with her parents to the community, and it left her feeling lonely and judged from all sides. Many years later and far away, she continues to be misunderstood by people who drew conclusions in the controversy over her parents' breakup.

Sallie went back to Beirut recently to visit her childhood home. As she walked through the mission campus, she observed, all the buildings still remained standing, but the windows were simply shattered, gaping holes. Shell holes pocked the walls. The place was deserted.

And yet the cyclamen--her favorite flowers of her childhood--were still blooming. Through war and peace, struggle and conflict and the devastation of the land, they keep coming up year after year, their ever-cheerful blooms beautifying their broken world.

And that, Sallie said, spoke volumes to her.