Irreconcilable

The first time it happened, we were at Disneyland.  

Back in May of 2009, we took the kids and flew to California to visit Jeff's family and our friends there--the last family trip we've taken to California, as a matter of fact.  (We're eager to go again, but finances. *sigh*)  While we were there, Jeff's sister Kim blessed us immensely by giving us free tickets to Disneyland, and Jeff's mom blessed us immensely by keeping 16-month-old Tobin so we could take only Josiah and David (well, Shav got to go along, too...in my womb) ;-) and have a little more freedom to do things with them.  It was a spectacular day, filled with laughter and fun.

Except for one part of it.  Towards the end of the day, Jeff took the boys on a more thrilling ride, the name of which escapes me at the moment; and since I was pregnant, I decided to sit that one out.  While waiting for them, I fished a book out of my backpack and opened it, eager to snatch a few moments to read.  The book was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  If you haven't read it, you should.  Also, if you haven't read it, I'll simply say that it's about Afghanistan, specifically the unbelievable challenges that women there face.  If you haven't read it, this next part might not make sense; but bear with me.

As I continued to read, I COULD NOT RECONCILE the horrible things I was reading about with the happy, carefree life I was living.  The contrast COULD NOT HAVE BEEN GREATER between beautiful, sunny Disneyland, with its throngs of happy-go-lucky families and its appearance of prosperity and freedom and the unspeakably difficult conditions in which the women in the book lived: no freedom, much pain, no wealth, much abuse, no hope.  And I think that last one is the worst of all, because without hope, what does one have?

I sat there on the bench at Disneyland, sunglasses hiding my eyes, my hands holding the book, my ears hearing the cheerful voices around me, but as if from a great distance.  Because of the intensity and the power of what I was reading, I felt myself removed from the reality that was swirling around me in southern California and suspended somewhere between there and Afghanistan.  

I was wrecked.

********

It happened again tonight.

No, I wasn't at Disneyland (too bad, right?).  :)  And no, I wasn't reading A Thousand Splendid Suns again.  But I was reading a book that gripped me so tightly I felt myself transported away from real life here in snowy, peaceful Virginia and set down in a concentration camp in Germany in 1945.  

The book is called Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein and was recommended recently by Rebekah, so I reserved it at the library and eagerly started reading it.  Tonight I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN until I had finished the last page.  That's not totally unheard of for me, because I do find it easy to become engrossed in a book and not want to stop reading--especially when I *should* be doing something else, like dishes or laundry.  ;-)  But it was different this evening.  I was so swept up in the story that I would literally look up from my book, glance around the living room, and find it strange to see our furnishings that ordinarily look quite normal to me!  I would look up, see the boys' coats and hats and gloves and boots from their time spent playing outside in the snow today, and feel so puzzled by that.  I'd look down, read some more, then let my eyes wander from the book...until they found something like the colored pencils Moriah had scattered all over the floor earlier this evening...and then it just wouldn't make sense.  Like the Disneyland experience, I COULD NOT RECONCILE what I was reading with what life was really like for me tonight.  I literally had to tell myself, "It's OK.  I'm in Virginia.  It snowed today.  The kids had fun in it.  Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.  I need to remember to get the gifts for the boys out of the minivan tonight.  We have plenty of wood for the woodstove.  We will be warm enough.  We have food.  We aren't starving."  Well, you get the idea. 

The contrast between the safe, happy time that this little sweetheart had today...

...and the conditions of utter horror that existed in the Nazi concentration camps was so huge that it almost defied belief.

It wrecked me.

I know I'll wake up tomorrow morning and be back in touch with the reality of my amazing, secure, abundant life; and I'm grateful for that.  But tonight, I feel as if the veil has been lifted, and I've glimpsed anew what life is and has been like for so many people born into circumstances so much more difficult than mine.  That chasm is so wide that I can't even mentally reconcile it, but I can--and I will, every single day--say thank you for this life I've been given.