By Janee Angel

This precious little girl is my daughters’ cousin. She is just a few months older than Phoebe.

They have never met.

I imagine they would be fast playmates but geography divides them.

While my 4-year-old goes to sleep in a comfortable home with princesses all around, her cousin sleeps in a crowded house with sounds of war all around.

I must admit that situations like this make me wonder, ‘why am I so blessed?’

I am American…my passport says so. To the rest of the world that is enough to say: I am rich.

I have enough food to feed my family, plus multiple visitors and even enough to give away.

My children have clothes on their backs. Phoebe even has something new to start school in next week.

My children have education (and a teacher as a mama). At 4, Phoebe can spell her name and determine the difference of 4 languages:  English, Dutch, French and Arabic. She even knows which books are in English, Dutch or Arabic (she recognizes the script).

We have clean water, electricity and TV in our home.

We have freedom.

Freedom to worship as we like. Our church can still  have crosses standing. No one has torn them down.

Freedom as a woman to walk down the street without the supervision of a man.

I can fall asleep every night with my little girls a room away (and sometimes crawling into our bed in the middle of the night) while my sister-in-law has been separated from her little ones for a year as she waits in a European country for residence papers that will allow her to free her family from war and constant threats of death. She waits…she waits to hold her little ones again and prays they live long enough for that moment to come.

Bombs fall now in my husband’s hometown in Syria.  Around 14 people in his family fled to another city…all packed in one house…hoping to sustain life.

We are all separated from each other and yet they are constantly on our minds. We ask over and over, “what can we do from here? How can we save them?”

This little girl in the picture holds a paper that in Arabic says, “I love you Mama.” Love sent through pictures that tries to replace hugs and kisses that any 4 year old should have.

War is evil. This war is evil.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:38-39)

This is Truth.

But my prayer remains that our God who is not separated from us will restore unity in families who are desperately waiting on His deliverance.

Help us Lord!

Janee Angel serves as a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel in Antwerp, Belgium. Learn more about Janee and her ministry at the CBF website.  Follow Janee on her blog Seasoned with Spice here.