Remembering My Momma.... 2 years later....

It was the most difficult day of my life, February 18, 2010. My momma went home to be with the Lord after what seemed like a very brief struggle with cancer. Growing up, I always thought that she would be around "forever". I always thought that I would finish college and Lord willing, get married and have kids, and then at a ripe old age, she would leave this world. Well, the Lord had different plans and called her home a little earlier than I had hoped.

I have always thought that since she passed away what a scene is must be in heaven. Anyone who knew anything about my momma knew that she loved music and was always singing. She is the whole reason I became interesting in singing, playing, and writing music myself. I like to think she made it up to heaven and just started singing praises to God so much that God had to say, "Take a breather honey; it's not like you are going anywhere." (That part is a joke.)

Well, after the dust settled and reality began to sink in, we had the daunting task of packing up the house and sorting through everything. One day, I was packing all of my stuff to move to my new home at MSU as well as trying to see if there was anything else that I could use. Off to the side was a cardboard box with a lot of music in it. It was about to get thrown away. Neither my sister or I thought much about it at first. Knowing that my mom was a music teacher, it made sense that there would be a lot of sheet music for school plays, church programs, and other events all over the place. Something didn't seem right throwing it away at that moment, so I took the box, placed it in my car, and headed back for MSU later that day. I got back, unloaded everything, and began to relax. I placed the box of music in my room. For over a year and a half, I kept telling myself that I should go through that box just to see what was in there. But my more manly tendencies to neglect cleaning and organizing emerged, and it never happened.

One day, I happened to get into one of my OCD cleaning fits (a quite rare occasion) and decided I would go through that music. Well I started looking through it. Nothing really jumped out at me at first. On top were school plays and random sheet music. Nothing that exciting. Mixed in everywhere were old lesson books of my mom's that were from when she was learning to play piano. So it got a little exciting. Well as I kept going through the rather large box of music I stumbled across something that would make my day.

My momma loved music. Everyone knew that. But my momma also wrote music and not just shortly before her death. To this day I can still remember being the white-haired little boy sitting on stage with my little sister and mother at Elliot Baptist Church and being "forced" to sing one of the songs she wrote with her. Of course I didn't understand anything that was going on; just that I really did not have a say in whether or not I did it.

The other thing everyone knows about my mom is, to use a good ole southern expression, bless her soul she had some of the messiest and most disorganized writing ever contrived upon this planet. Notes would be scribbled sideways and upside down and on the front and on the back of every piece of paper, phone book, or envelope she could find. And often it was a rarity not to find some person's name and phone number scribbled in one of the corners. Back to the story. What I saw before me was definitely something I did not expect to find: handwritten originals and copies of, to my knowledge, three songs she wrote around the late 1980's. The date on a "final" copy of one of them was 2-2-89. Yours truly was about a year and a half old at the time which makes this next part very special. I started to read the songs. Going through the box of music was already not an easy task, but this definitely didn't help emotions. I kept reading. And then something caught my eye that I honestly was not expecting, a song that I had no clue had been written. So I started to read that song. I made it through the first page and then this jumped out at me:

Yours truly was mentioned in a song. I don't know how it happened. Maybe I was just laying on the couch beside my mom when she was writing, and that's how she came to write it. Maybe I was running around the house causing mayhem (that's probably what my sister would say). I don't know. But this definitely made my day. Boy was I glad this box did not get thrown away.

So on this two year anniversary of my momma's passing, I leave you with the words she wrote so long ago:
"God's love is around the world you live in; All around all that you see; All around everybody and it covers you and me; So take the gift that He offers; It's forever and it's free; Spread His love to everybody, all around"

Food for Thought: An Interview with an Egyptian Christian on U.S. Foreign Policy (Part 1)

So everything is gearing up for the presidential election next fall here in the US. Republican candidates are trying to distance themselves from President Obama while trying to bash each other simultaneously. I kept up with most of the debates held between the Republican candidates over the past few months and got to thinking about something really interesting. The candidates go back and forth about what the US foreign policy should be. But what do people think of the US foreign policy? In particular, what do Middle Easterners think of US foreign policy? Another question I had been thinking about is if you are a Christian and subscribe to the commonly held belief of just war theory, how does the current US foreign policy compare? Can a Christian (read conservative Republican if you are from the southern US) blindly support every US military engagement? I have talked to friends from all over and had an idea of what the typical Middle Easterner thought, but one night while I was on vacation in Malaysia, I had an idea. So I interviewed one of my friends in Malaysia, who is a Egyptian college student studying over there. Here is the text of the interview from the first three questions. One thing to keep in mind as you read. I did not fact check every single thing in this. I was obviously not born during the time a lot of it happened. But I hope that everyone sees that regardless of factual accuracy, if people really do think like this (which is what is important), how can the US improve? More importantly, how can we as American Christians show the God of the Bible effectively to people we come across given certain predispositions towards Americans?

Question 1: To provide some context when we get to foreign policy, briefly tell me about the background you grew up in.

“I’m an Egyptian. I was born in Egypt and brought up in Egypt. And then I moved to Saudi Arabia because my father found a better opportunity there for work and here I am studying in Malaysia. I believe in Christ. I’m a Christian. I was born in a Christian family. Any my family always have had an interest in news. That’s why I watch a lot of news.”

Question 2: Excluding foreign policy, generally, what do people in the Middle East think of America?

“What people there in the Middle East think about the US. In fact all of them, most of them look up to the US. The US has given the world a model of progress, a model of good ideals, it has always inspired the world and everybody looks up at that. Apart from foreign policy and all that, people think about American people as people who have ideals, they have principals, they’re hard working. They’re just great. But another thing on the side, they don’t really think they are religious at all. They believe that the US is totally irreligious where atheism culture is prominent. Of course you can guess from where they got such an impression, from of course Hollywood and all these movies. And then they never know that actually quite a number of Americans are very committed and conservatives. I was really surprised to meet a lot of Americans who are so committed to Christ. They just gave their lives to Christ. I was really astonished by that. And then apart from that, apart from foreign policy people think they are creative and great."

Question 3: What do people think about American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East?

"Concerning American foreign policy in the Middle East, I think it’s terrible the way that the American leadership has dealt with was bad, unfriendly, and it brought, I think a lot of problems to the Middle East and of course to the US itself. Let me give you an example on that. The problem with the American leadership, it didn’t update its mentality after the fall of the Soviet Union. In that sense, it has divided the world. It has always divided the world into two parts: Pro-American and Anti-American. Let’s say for example, during the 1979, the Soviet Union decided to invade Afghanistan. Of course the US could not allow Afghanistan to turn into a communist state and that’s why they started to fund all these mujahedeen. And in 9/11 there was mujahedeen who were viewed as freedom fighters. In just one night they turned into terrorists, but unfortunately Americans are fooled by American propaganda that Osama bin Laden is made in the USA. He is someone who was made; he was given power by the USA itself. And my evidence on that again is the mujahedeen part and the freedom fighters who were praised, funded by the US itself as part of the Reagan doctrine. That is, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Reagan doctrine was applied to Afghanistan and I think during the invasion of Panama and that’s exactly the problem with the American leadership. It never tries to have friends. It never tries to view itself as someone; it shows itself as a hypocrite all the time. I really don’t know why. Another part I would like to talk about is now we are living, I have lived the Arab Spring. Despite the fact I am studying in Malaysia, I have lived the Arab Spring, I have lived the revolution in my country and the American attitude toward this is they were really diplomatic. They really did not take a firm stance against Mubarak. Nobody can argue with me that the US has always supported dictators, has always supported dictators. Mubarak killed many Egyptians for no reason. Mubarak and his regime violated many articles of human rights and yet the US used to fund him, used to give him money, and it supported him all over the world. As if he is so unlike Gaddafi. But keep in mind that he was doing exactly the same thing that Gadhafi. The only difference was he was acting for US interests. As far as I think that’s really hypocritical of the US government. Saddam Hussein, again made in the US. He cooperated with the US against Iran and in the end, when he decided to try to invade Kuwait which of course is an American territory, they decided to go against him. That’s terribly hypocritical. He has always been a dictator ever sense he came to power in 1979. He has always been a dictator. Third part I would like to talk about is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. You can never, you can never have a good ray to consider America’s image as long as this problem is there. They feel like a part of their land is being ripped off. What do you think? Fourth part is, American bases are all over the world. They’re in Japan, Germany, Qatar, they were in Saudi Arabia but they moved, Iraq, Afghanistan, everywhere. I would like to know your feeling if you were an American. If my country for example tried to establish a base in the US, I would love to know how you were going to react to this. Of course you won’t just accept such an idea. I don’t think so. So back to the Arab Israeli conflict here. The thing is Americans think that they should stand for Israel and they don’t know why. I am going to ask every American why the US is supporting Israel. I’m not saying that we should kill all Jews. No, No, No. I’m not that person. Never. None of the Arabs are like this. None of the Middle Easterners are like this. We are not people who like want to kill as it’s emphasized in the American propaganda. No that’s not true. It’s just that we want our piece of land back and that’s it. That’s exactly what we want. Why I say that this is true is that when Egypt had a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and I believe that this was signed in the US, I think during the time of Carter, it’s preserved till now. All the establishments of Egypt try and they try really hard to keep that treaty. And they are working on it and they are making it and they can. It’s not like there can’t be peace. No that’s not true. As long as you keep upon this attitude that is being stubborn about it, of course they are going to retaliate. What do you expect? So concerning also the bases that the US has all over the world. This is I think scratching the sovereignty of the states for example Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf. Of course they won’t be happy about it. They will never be happy about it. They’re being funded by peoples’ money. That’s another thing. About the Iraq War, I challenge any American to tell me what is the reason behind the Iraq War. Just give me one reason. Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was presented by the Secretary of State Colin Powell. He gave so called irrefutable evidence that was not true. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no reason for the invasion of Iraq. President Obama himself gave some sort of a confession that the Iraq War had no reason by saying, “but now Iraq is better off.” As if this is a better compromise of the death of thousands and thousands of Iraqis. And now the state of Iraq is like nothing, I mean Iraq is not now way better off. That’s not true. There’s no real democracy there. People do not understand anything. Infrastructure is destroyed. Corruption is really high. And people who are supported by Iran, for example Al-Maliki, is still there in power. If you observe Iraqi politics you’re going to find many funny things such as like liberal people and secular people such as Ayad Allawi. He is not being elected. He can’t come to power just because of political corruption as far as I think. And the US is unable to do; I know don’t know if it’s unable to do anything, or that’s exactly what it wants to do. I really don’t know. But I feel like this war was not justified and I believe that a lot of Americans did not feel that it was justified, and I can think like that because most Americans want their troops to come home again."

Well, that is it for today. Stay tuned for answers to more questions including how the US could improve relations, a nuclear Iran, and why terrorists want to attack the US.