God, where do we go from here?

God,

We have walked quite the road together this year, You and us.

In the early days, when horror bled into horror and the world was unmade around us and so many people stared at us from “did you see my son? Did you see my sister?” posts that slowly dimmed into death notices, I kept turning to You in disbelief. “But how could You let,” I’d start, only for my exclamations to keep on dying on my lips, because I knew the answer, didn’t I? I knew. I knew.

You created us with free choice, and free choice – ours and our enemies’ – got us here.

I knew that.

But I kept glancing at You nonetheless. Because this, God? Truly, this is what You meant for Your world to look like?

I tore my disbelief from my heart and held it in my hands and worked it into action, folding it into volunteer work, into helpful words for others, into encouraging smiles for my children, much like some women take flour and water and fold them, fold them, working them into dough, into bread, into something that can nourish and sustain.

I have no time to hash this out with You now, I thought then.

People need me.

I need me.

I need me to work and do and rise lest I lose not only my sense of reality, my sense of safety, my sense of our place in history, but also my sense of self.

We have walked a long road since those early days, God. I felt You crying with me at funerals. I glimpsed Your hand on that night when we colored our doorposts with courage, awaiting the Iranian attack even as we prepared to celebrate a far more ancient – yet newly relevant – redemption.

And now, as we finished going all the way around the sun You created, coming back  a full circle, I look at You, at us, at the world, and feel weary. Exhausted.

But also, in an odd way, I feel like I can finally say – fine. I accept.

I don’t accept that this reality should continue, God. Don’t get me wrong please. I don’t accept a reality where our brothers and sisters are dying in tunnels. I don’t accept a reality where so many families must tear themselves apart to enable our army to march. I don’t accept a reality where our children must huddle in shelters and where we must go on paying and paying in wounded soldiers, in displaced civilians, in so much death.

I don’t, and I will go on demanding better from You God. From You – and from ourselves.

But I accept that what happened did, in fact, happen.

I accept that the past is past. I accept that unbelievable though October 7th was, it did in fact take place. I am ready to honor our losses not with rage but with acceptance. Not by railing against them or repressing them but by acknowledging that they are irrevocable, and that they hurt.

No metaphorical folding of dough will make them go away God.

We shall go to them one day, but they will not come back to us.

What happened happened, and it’s part of our story now. It’s pointless to keep hoping otherwise, I can see that.

It happened, and it is part of who we are now. It’s part of what makes us —- us.

But God, it’s also part of You, forever more.

For Your name is upon us, God. It has been upon us since you called to Abram to go forth and he heeded the call, since You called us all to follow, over and over again in the slopes and hills of history, and we heeded, and heeded, and heeded again.

We chose to rise to the challenge. We chose to walk the walk.

And so our name and Your name became entangled forever. And our story is Your story, too.

You are the God whose believers fought against Antiochus and survived exiles and built new lives over and over again only to have to leave once more. You are the God whose believers turned to ashes in Auschwitz and burnt at the stake in Spain and dared to return to Zion and drain its swamps after millenia.

You are He whose name is crying with our fallen brethren’s blood from the depths of the earth, and whose name is groaning with our captive loved ones in the tunnels.

You are He who lived with us through October 7th, who bled and shrieked and sometimes died with us, who rested in our hands as we braided our pain into actions while glancing at You in disbelief and anger.

This is who You are now, God.

This is our story and Your story, too.

And I want to know, God.

I want to know, as we keep on walking on this road together. Where do we go from here?