On Friday, this post of mine about meeting an extraordinary family in Israel was published by the Associated Baptist Press. You can read it here.
I wanted to share a bit more about this family that I was not able to include in the article.
Not only did they lose one of their children in the conflict, but two. And if this wasn't bad enough, Mrs. Zaidan also lost her both her parents at a young age, her father when she was 12 years old and her mother three years later. She described a childhood that was bewildering at best. Additionally around the time that she lost her two sons, her sister died in an accident as well.
I remember as I heard this sweet couple speak I couldn't help but think of Kate Campbell's "How Much Can One Heart Hold?" for the grief this family had been asked to bear just seemed too much for words. Too much . . . really too much.
Yet, the ways this family has chosen to channel their grief for the good of others, I believe, has saved their lives. They've looked at some of life's darkest moments in the face and said "We will remember" "We will tell our story" and "We will not let the past repeat itself."
Miroslav Volf says in his book The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World the following about what happens when we don't deal with grief, pain and loss as the Zaidans have done when he writes, "Victims will often become perpetrators precisely on account of their memories. It is because they remember past victimization that they justify as rightful self-protection what to most observers look like violence born of intolerance or even hatred."
I'm so glad this world is full not only of victims who are repeating the past with no other options, but wonderful testimonies of courageous people like the Zaidans. They are truly living out love's hard calling.
