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I live in the Middle East. My Husband and I are Worried about Our Safety Once We Move Back to America
If that doesn’t tell you about the dire state of mass shootings, what does?
For those of y’all who might be newbies, I and my Jordanian husband currently live in Amman, Jordan. If you don’t know about this place, I’m not offended. It’s probably because Jordan basically never makes the news. In fact, unless you’re a sucker for international affairs, you probably don’t even know that Jordan is considered to be one of the safest destinations in the Middle East. Moreover, Jordan has been a committed American ally for several decades over, and that won’t be changing any time soon, as there’s no underlying threat here like there was in Syria or Iraq regarding any substantive anti-establishment Islamist movement.
To refresh your memory, Jordan is situated alongside Saudi Arabia, The West Bank, Israel (or Palestine, depending on your preferred nomenclature), Syria and Iraq. While there are some scary countries all around, Jordan is a nice little country where our homeboy Jesus got baptized (at Al-Maghtas). He didn’t really walk around Jordan much inland, but he did chill out around the Dead Sea, as well as go to a village up north called Umm Qais. There are some other pretty important biblical sites here, too. Mount Nebo, where Moses saw the Promised Land before his death, for example.
So yeah if you’re a history nerd and feel a particular attachment to your Christian faith, I super recommend traveling here for a tour sometime during your life.
When that awful Buffalo shooting happened the other day, I and my husband sat down to have a little fatigued mid-morning chat about the realities of the United States.
“Nowhere in the US is safe, dear.” I had to break the news to him.
While I’ve never exactly been anywhere that got shot up while I was there, I’ve visited three places during my life that have.
Once in rural Oregon, a man suffering from schizophrenia cut his mother’s head off and tossed it in the middle of a supermarket. Just a few weeks…