I’m sitting at the table with Mary on my left, John across from me, Melissa to my right, Julia across from her, and Reid at the end. I take another bite of my chicken and bacon Gyro in Molyvos on the island of Lesvos, Greece enjoying every second of it. We are all excited for Julia because last night, we found out that she is fully funded! Everyone is laughing and having a good time. After lunch, we are going to go down to the hot springs on the island to relax on our day off. We start talking about how the refugees come over from Turkey and how difficult it can be for them.
Then John says, “One day, the Turkish coast guard ran over a boat of refugees. They all went under the water and drowned under the ship.”
On the Left: Turkey – On the Right – Lesvos. This is the 4 Mile Stretch the Refugees Travel to Freedom
“Wait, what?!” I replied in confusion and quick anger. “Did they do it on purpose?” I asked…trying to reason this out in my mind.
“Yea,” John replies. “It is less work for them if they don’t have to take them all the way to the Turkish shore. This is what the refugees are dealing with in Turkey and when they try to leave Turkey.”
Thousands upon thousands of life jackets in the life jacket grave yard.
Wait. There is no way. That’s not possible. My head starts spinning. Confusion. Anger. Hatred. Anger. Fear. Anger. At this point I had finished my Gyro and we are sitting around the table in light conversation. I can’t switch gears that quickly. I don’t know what to do with this information. I can’t get the thought out of my mind. What if that was Isaiah, our young translator who has been teaching Melissa Arabic as she teaches him Spanish? He came over on a boat like that. What if it was my friends Rena, Mara, and Mo? No, I can’t imagine it. I love them so much and I get so excited to see them every time I go to Moria for a shift. What if it was my little princess Ameera? She is only five and she could hug me and cuddle up next to me forever without ever getting tired of it. My precious Ameera. I just can’t imagine. Those lives mattered.
How could the Turkish coast guard be so heartless and inhuman? I can’t comprehend it -intentionally run over a boat full of people, probably between 50 and 100 people. Fifty to one hundred lives are gone… just like that.
This is one of the rubber boats that the refugees come over on. They could fit 150 people on this boat.
These are the rubber boats and life jackets that were left on the beach by the refugees.
I am no longer part of this conversation. I get up and take a walk outside finding the nearest fence to lean on and think about this. All I want to do is punch the day lights out of every single Turkish man that was on that boat. Tie them all up in a line and let me at them. That is exactly how I want to get my anger out right now. Ok, so that is not an option. What the heck do I do with this?
“Lord, I need help with this. Why would you let this happen? You are sovereign. You could have stopped the boat with a storm or something. Why didn’t You?”
“Free choice. Evil exists because of free choice. I want My children to CHOOSE me, but because of this freedom, some people choose evil instead,” He replies to me in my earnest prayer.
“But why? Why? I don’t understand,” I frantically ask Him.
“I feel the same way. I feel exactly the same way when injustice happens in the world, but remember that I am the judge. I see everything. I saw this happen and I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of years of evil like this. People think that I am so harsh in the old testament, but this is why. I have to be, because of the evil that exists. People were sacrificing their own children to false gods. I had to bring judgment on their societies. I saw this happen and I will bring judgment accordingly,” He replies to me.
“What do I do with this anger? We were supposed to have a fun relaxing day today, but now I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself,” I tell Him in my frustration.
“Be angry. It is righteous anger that I use to move people into action. Mourn for the lives of the people who were on that boat. Mourn. Be angry. Sit in this for awhile until I show you what to do with it.”
I walk back to the restaurant, feeling a little better, but still not sure what to do with all of this. I pay for my Gyro and then walk outside to join the others as we wait to head out to the hot springs. I look up at some souvenirs. Before we arrived at the restaurant for lunch, I thought about looking through the souvenirs, but as I look at them now, it disgusts me. There are people dyeing at sea and even being murdered by the Turkish coast guard and there are post cards and souvenirs in my face like they are supposed to matter.
Then, it hit me. A dream I had years ago comes flooding back into my thoughts. Every dot connecting. It was for this! It was for this moment!
As a junior in college, I had a dream that I shared with some friends at the time. This was the dream:
I am in a zoo looking at the animal exhibits. I look in a tiger cage and see a man sitting on the ground by the fence, dead. I told some people around me, but they didn’t care. They left him there. Then I went into a dolphin tank and I got to ride on a dolphin. I went under the water at one point and saw a man at the bottom of the tank dead. He had drowned. No-one noticed and did not hear me when I told them. At the end of the dream, I was with a group of people and we were posing for a group photo. After this, I was in an upper room getting dressed in what looked like a ball gown. I looked out the window and saw a castle on a hill.
Fast forward to now. In training for Moria, we were told not to take pictures of the refugees because they are people, “not animals in a cage in a zoo.” The people who were dead in the cages in my dream symbolize the refugees that have died trying to get to freedom. The dolphin tank represents all of the dolphins I have seen in Greece. The people taking the pictures in the dream represent people who are living their every day lives looking the other way, not really caring about what is going on here. Lastly, the island we are living on right now, has a castle that sits on top of a hill.
We go to the hot springs and enjoy our day alternating between the cool sea and the intense hot springs. As I stand in the water, I think…there could be bodies of refugees in the bottom of the sea right now – in fact, there probably are. Every step I take in the sea and during beach clean up days, I think about this and I keep my eyes out, knowing I could see a dead body any minute. What do I do with this? As I walk back, I think about this some more. I come across a wrecked refugee boat that says, “#SAFE PASSAGE. NOW!
It’s not safe. People need to know. Then the Lord tells me, “So tell them.”
