Overwhelmed
- hailey685
- Mar 28
- 5 min read
I think that many of us feel overwhelmed at this point in human history, with so much going on globally that our senses, our emotions, struggle to keep up. We have lived “overwhelmed” for a decade. Overwhelmed by the "goodness of God in the land of the living" and also overwhelmed by the evil of this present time.
Our last month has knocked us off balance, into balance and off again. Our emotions soared high and hit lows. We celebrated Valentine’s Day with great joy, we loved watching the guys receive love and acknowledge our girls with honor. Our hearts danced as a father hugged his daughter who had been lost to him for years during her captivity in Daesh. We were so grateful to witness this moment. A moment that was the physical manifestation of restoration, of the years that the locusts had eaten being restored beyond measure.
“Springs of Hope shows us that we should cherish love. My happiest moment was when I got to give a rose to someone who means the world to me - my Dad. It was a simple but special way to show him how much I love him, how grateful I am to him that he never lost hope for my return.” - Naba
Valentine's Day
Yet not all could celebrate love.
“Honestly, after ten years of being without a mother’s love, I am very confused as to what love is. I am satisfied with the love of my friends.” - B.
As I travelled recently two men asked me to bring them a gift, bread made by a mother. They each wanted two pieces of bread baked at home. Men well into their forties. They still needed something that reminded them of their Mum. How would our kids not be confused?
International Women's Day
We rejoiced again as we celebrated International Women’s Day. All of our male students, regardless of age, including our Special Needs gentlemen were quick to honor our girls and women. Age was no barrier. We felt that our cup was full. We so often walk through the valley of the shadow of death, these two occasions reminded us that it is only a shadow. And then the shadow loomed over us.
As we were plunged into mourning. The mourning that is both individual and yet collective. Federal Iraq released 32 corpses for burial in Shingal. The forensics now completed, the bodies or the remains, let’s say, were handed over to our students for burial. Kids from the village of Kojo. Many of them live in Qadiya camp, some have moved to Shariya in order to find work. All of them connected tribally.
They went for a week to Shingal ( Sinjar ), the media was flooded with photos of burials, of sitting alongside fresh graves. Our hearts broke again, how many breakings? How many breakings for these young men and women who lived in hope for ten years.
Upon their return they came back to us, we found them huddled on a cold day, all sitting together on the benches outside, all wearing black. Their body language was tense, closed, hurting. I sense that we all wanted to hug them but knew that the hugs would not be received.
They needed to be together, to just hang out together, to process in their way. They needed to feel that they are 'men' not objects of pity.
The following week we took them to a snow picnic. Just to change "their weather", to feed them well, to give them time to be kids, to play kids games together. Just to be and to mess around in the snow. Our snow picnic was leisurely. We had no time restraint, we would follow their lead. They danced, they sang, they devoured the meat…who cooks for them? We went home with grateful hearts, the bridge between death and life had once again been crossed. Balance had been attained. We were stable again and could as a tribe move forward. Or so we thought.
Dilber
"The snow picnic was a great day, we had so much fun even with all the playful snowball fights. We all needed this time out, just to have fun. The timing was perfect after all of the funerals. Most of my friends buried bones. I didn’t receive my family’s bones, but it was hard and tense anyway. We needed this time out and the snow made it even more special. We felt clean after it. Thank you.”
Dilber
Saddam
“I loved the picnic, I have learned that the door of hope is always open for us, whatever we go through, that door is there and I deeply appreciate that.
Saddam
And then tragic news hit the headlines. A post on social media went viral and we were plunged into mourning. One of our students, a beautiful, gentle girl named Dilsoz had been murdered. She had been sold on the slave markets of Syria, raped, tortured, starved, you name it, it happened to her yet she survived. She survived to thrive, to study, to learn, to begin to make up for the years she had lost in captivity. She fell in love, they married and recently returned to Shingal. It was her husband who stabbed her seven times and killed her.
Once again the mourning was both individual and collective. Dilsoz is the sister of two current students, Yousra and Yesra, the only survivors of their family. She was cousin or niece to nearly all the students who had just received corpses to bury.
Yousra and Yesra decided to bring the body from Shingal to Qadiya for burial. They sat shiva in the miserable camp, where death and the spiritual stench of mass graves have dominated the atmosphere for a decade.
We sat outside on the ground. As I looked around at all our kids, our students, the homeless, the fatherless, the motherless, it was a “You too” moment as I was overwhelmed by the size and closeness of the tribe which included some of our Sewing Hope ladies, and one of our Special Needs gentlemen.
The alone-ness of these young people is overwhelming. The life decisions that they have to make are overwhelming. Talking with Daoud recently I asked him how life in Shingal is, his reply was that it was fine but he was still dealing with all the paperwork and Federal Iraq bureaucracy of registering all his family as dead and taking his legal place as head of a family that does not yet exist.
When I am overwhelmed I shut down. Go into something akin to “battery saving mode” but then I have an anchor, I have that rope of hope that pulls me back up.
“From the ends of the earth I call to you for help. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
Psalm 61
As I look back at this past month my thoughts turn to Isaiah 61 which although addressing the mourners in Zion, is still applicable. “He gives the oil of joy from underneath the mourning, the garment of praise from underneath the spirit of heaviness.”
And that dear friends, is why we still hold our position after a decade. We are still nurturing seedlings, tending young saplings who with time will grow up to be “trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”
And yes although we may be overwhelmed, we are not as those without hope. We know that...
“in his time he makes all things beautiful. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Can you help?
With your help, we are standing alongside these young saplings - nurturing and loving them through the storms and not letting go until they flourish.
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