I woke one night to the sound of wind and rain. Living in the desert of northern Jordan creates a subtle constant thirst, a persistent hum of hope and welcome held out to all rain. This night, I listened as the wind capsized the heavy metal structure that held a neighbor’s porch swing. It fell with a bang and I began to worry about the trees. In addition to so many olive and stone fruit trees, our arid landscape also hosts evergreen varieties: scrub pine, cypress, and the rare cedar. Like the rest of the desert, they are always a bit dry and thirsty-survivors. I pictured the browning tufts of needles on the cypress, the vulnerable upper branches. I wondered if the trees that flank our apartment might break and fall in this wild wind.
I tiptoed out of bed, past sleeping husband and little boys, to the balcony that adjoins our living room. Closing the sliding doors behind me, I stepped to the railing and beheld something marvelous.
Against a sky backdrop the color of clementines, I could see the silhouettes of the pine and cypress and eucalyptus swaying rhythmically in the wind. I saw them dance in the rain, confident and anchored. I witnessed joy. Jutting pine needles and rattling diamond eucalyptus leaves flew one direction and then arced in the other, playing in the gale. No branch cracked or fell. The trees made a spectacle of their own rootedness.
Wet wind pricking my face, I lingered to watch and listen a moment, closing my eyes. I then padded back to bed. Tucking myself into the curve of my husband’s warm and slumbering body, I felt the deepest peace.
I felt a bit like a little girl in her flannel nightie sneaking out of bed late at night. Uneasy about the unknown and the sound of strange music, she cracks open the large ballroom door, careful not to disturb or to be seen. There, she beholds a world she never knew, a world of swirling gowns and stringed music. She sees her parents, laughing and dancing, her mother’s bright silk skirts unfurling as she spins. Her father’s eyes sparkle. She tiptoes back to bed, heart overflowing and fears evaporated. She’s glimpsed a larger world outside of herself and that comforts her.
Seeing the trees that stormy night felt that way to me. This stolen peek at my Father’s dancing and powerful secret world imparted to me a grounded wonder.
I turned my thoughts to the God who “makes wars cease to the ends of the earth"... Who keeps trees rooted and dancing in the storm. And the memory...sent out a root system of hope and trust in the soil of my heart.
Months later, sounds from another world woke us again in our beds, rattling our doors. They were not the sounds of a rainstorm. In an effort to complete the process of seizing control of southern Syria, the military had launched a bombing campaign just north of the Syrian-Jordanian border that lies 12 miles to our north. For more than five years, the sound of shelling in nearby Daraa’ reverberated like distant thunder in our little town at a fairly consistent rate—sometimes daily and sometimes weekly. The olive farm where we live allowed for louder reverberations as no larger village lay between us and the border, and no buildings absorbed the sound. The low thud was always subtle and distant, not recognized as bombing by our children. The military used a new kind of weapon in their bombing campaign: “The Elephant Rocket,” aptly nicknamed for the way it caused the earth to quake like a herd of elephants stampeding over a savannah. The traveling shudder and thud now woke us at night, sometimes in rapid succession that sounded like overgrown artillery.
My husband and I quickly synthesized political information in our minds that allowed us to know firmly that those bombs would not reach us and why. Our stomachs sickened at the thought of bombs hitting buildings, dwellings. Our minds turned to our children. What would they make of these now-clear war sounds? Could they understand that they were safe despite the proximity?
Our older son asked about the noises and my husband explained the situation plainly, open, and frank. Our son received the information calmly. Later, on the lower level of their bunk bed, I held them in their soft summer-thin blankets. I sang hymns and we talked about their Syrian friends, Amir and Yusef. They’d shared many soccer games and afternoons playing “Memory” together on the simple rug in their family’s apartment. These friends were safe now that they were here in our town, away from Syria. I explained to my boys that it was the same for them. They were safe here. We prayed and I felt their heart rates through the thin fabric of their pajamas, slow and gentle. I held them up against my body, at rest in the storm.
Earlier that day, lying together on our backs, I’d read to them from a book about two children, Siri and Erik, in a village in Denmark. During a time of turmoil in their village, they observed their mother’s calm. “As they crawled into their beds that night, Siri and Erik felt that God was strangely far away, but as long as their mother felt He was near, they knew He must be, for mothers always knew about such things” (Sticks Across the Chimney: a Story of Denmark by N. Burlon). In the morning, we read Psalm 46 as they spooned yogurt into their bowls. My heart felt pierced. I knew my children now ingested David’s words about the earth “quaking” and about “nations in uproar” with an intimacy I struggled to accept for them. We turned our thoughts to the God who “makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.” He keeps trees rooted and dancing in the storm. We prayed together with new knowledge and confidence.
Indeed, if my Father could make the trees dance in the storm, if knowing that could ground my soul, the same grounding could lay within my grasp, and my children’s grasp during a very different storm. The memory of those pines, swaying, ecstatic, and untouched by the wild rain, sent out a root system of hope and trust in the soil of my own heart. I knew I could pass this to my children in this moment. I knew I had awakened to witness those trees in the storm for a time such as this.
