Ahava

It’s been a year since I made that life-changing trip across the ocean. I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. I can still smell the marketplace and taste the saltiness of the Dead Sea. I can still see the faces of the Bedouin people in my mind. I remember climbing Masada like it was just yesterday, and the view from the top that took my breath away. In Israel everything about my life made sense. It was almost like blinders were removed from my eyes.. I found peace and understanding about a lot of things that had been eating away at me for a long time. For those few weeks in Israel God allowed me to see myself and my life from His perspective. And it was absolutely overwhelming. Never in my life have I felt such beautiful, fulfilling, unconditional love. It overflows from every single river and from underneath every rock. Even in the barren desert, there’s no escaping it. Nothing compares and word’s can’t describe. Ahava means “love” in Hebrew. I feel like the sound of that one word somehow encompasses every emotion that I’ve been trying to convey. No one truly understands what I’m talking about unless they’ve experienced it for themselves, because it’s unlike anything else in the world. To anyone else it’s absurd to think that such a strong feeling of connection can be made to a foreign land in such a brief period of time. It’s absurd to feel homesick for a place with a language you can’t speak and a culture you don’t fully understand. It doesn’t make sense to step off a plane in a country you’ve never been before and feel like you’re returning home. No, it doesn’t make sense. Israel stole a piece of my heart last year, a big piece, but I’m pretty okay with it. I think it was supposed to have been there all along.