My House in Bethlehem
I had not been to Bethlehem since the war started.
Matthew had a few times to visit the church. He moves through these crossings with the easy confidence of someone who knows exactly who he is.
I don’t.
At the border, the officer spoke to me in Hebrew. I met his eyes, smiled, and let the silence hit one beat longer until he shifted to English. Then I answered.
We drove through the winding streets, past walls where spray painted faces watched the road. Journalists, mothers, young men all etched into the concrete wall. The newswoman’s eyes followed us as we turned the corner to in the direction of the church.
We arrived and pulled the car half up onto the sidewalk, and I slipped out and made, my way to the kitchen to ask if I could have a glass of water. The hostess waved it away with a gentle firmness. “Please don’t ask for anything,” she said. “This is your house” pressing a glass of mint tea was set into my hand before I could speak while steam drifted from a pot fragrant with cumin and lemon.
They asked about my kids, and I offered the easy version. Ages. Coffee places. The way laundry piles when they are home.
Soon the missions team arrived.
Curious faces appearing in the doorway, their voices bright with anticipation, grateful to have come so far to sit in this room.
“Do you have a bomb shelter?” one asked.
The matriarch shook her head. “No. When the noise comes, we stand in the hallway, away from the glass, and wait for it to pass.” She traced a line in the air. Over their roof toward my neighborhood.
I thought of our concrete shelter at home, the metal door, the water stacked on the floor. The missiles that had flown over her house and were aimed for mine. I kept my thoughts to myself and reached for the plates.
At the table, dishes landed, food was prayed for and we began to eat. The American women had left a seat open for me, and I slid in beside them.
“How old are your kids?” one asked.
“One turned twenty on Saturday.”
“College?”
“No.”
“They’re not home,” I said lowering my voice. “They’re in the army.”
“That must be hard because of the war.”
The Arab women had drifted back toward the stove, and I lowered my voice to tell the story Aaron told me about walking through the fresh graves. When I reached the part about what someone had left there, the sentence thinned out and stopped. My mouth closed as my throat tightened, the tea cooling in my hand and the clock ticked behind me. The women’s movements slowing as they leaned in to hold the moment with me.
At last one of them finished it for me.
“A Lego set?”
“Yes.” I said, relieved that she had set the word down where I could not.
“Let us pray for her,” someone said, already rising.
Before I could redirect, the women gathered. Quick nods. Chairs skimming the floor. Their hands found my shoulders. Matthew crossed the room and sat beside me, as a cameraman slipped into the doorway. The shutter began to click. A small groan escaped from me before I could bring it back. I tucked my free hand under my thigh to keep it from floating up in protest.
Matt came closer and I shifted slightly toward the door, more instinct than choice.
“Father,” the first voice began.
I listened for the room more than the Savior. The shutter’s clicking. The women’s Arabic threading by the stove. The wall clock offering me its seconds. None of this was a place to speak openly about what was rising up to heaven. In the next room, the men sat together easing through a careful “so you are saying,” and a softer “go on.”
I looked toward our hostess with a quiet apology ready if she met my eyes.
“Amen,” someone said. It was not the last. Another voice continued, then another. The petitions rose, and my children’s names moved through the air like dust rising in a sunbeam.
Later, the hostess leaned in again, almost scolding and almost smiling. “Please do not ask for anything. I said to you this is your house. You must not ask for anything.”
When our time ended, we gathered our things and thanked them, and promised to visit them sooner rather than later.
I walked toward the car and glanced back at the skyline, the hills pressed in close around the neighborhood so lifted my phone to take a picture.
An arab voice behind me spoke gently. “Better not take photos here.” Not sharp. Just a soft guardrail set in place.
I lowered my phone, nodded, and slipped it into my pocket. I felt the small miss of it, how easily I could get something wrong even after so long.
As we drove away, the painted path came into view again. The wall held nothing that matched: old paint rubbing against new, slogans dissolving into portraits, portraits softening into silence. Every spray can had carried its own truth, its own grief, its own accusation, its own longing.
I thought about how many lives press against these walls, and how few of their stories are ever mine to tell.