Tonight I bake cookies with my kids by my side, but my heart
is not in it. All day I have fought off tears, feeling my chest tightening and
my breath catch in my throat. Equal parts flour and sugar are landing on the floor
and remaining in the bowl, but that barely matters as I look at my sweet girls.
The one in pig tails holds out her tiny hand hoping for a few more chocolate
chips to pop in her mouth. The mischievous gleam in her eye tells me she knows
she is pushing her limits. I smile slightly and put three more in her
palm. I am standing here in my kitchen
simply, quietly, peacefully making cookies, but half a world away tonight women
are clinging to their children and saying their last goodbyes.
Kabul has fallen and men with machine guns are going house
to house to reap destruction on innocent families. No one is baking cookies
there. I can’t imagine the conversation
parents must be having as they wait for their home to be invaded and their
family to be ripped apart. Do you prepare your children for what is to come? Do
you hope that when your door gets kicked down they shoot all of you at once? An
unthinkable atrocity that I cannot even fathom.
Would that be more merciful than letting the Taliban have their way with
your little girls? I shudder and pull mine in closer kissing the top of their
heads. I can’t imagine. Thankfully, tonight I don’t have to, but
somewhere out there a woman just like me does.
She is not so unlike myself delighting in that mischievous toddler smile,
her heart bursting with love for the little ones God has given her. Yet, at the
same time it is being shattered into a thousand pieces when she thinks about
what the night might bring. My emotions
are overwhelming as I grieve for her, my prayers have been unending. I stare blankly into the kitchen as my mind
is filled with desperate pleas for mercy. I am jarred back into reality once
again as the kitchen timer goes off. It
just doesn’t make sense. Tonight I am baking
cookies.
