My thoughts are miles away in Cairo today as frequent contact with my daughter,  Annie, and other friends keeps us updated on the news that doesn’t make it to the paper.

For those who have missed some of the recent happenings, Egypt is once more on the front page of newspapers. The hope and unity from the Arab Spring are in question as discouragement of the ruling military has reached a breaking point. Thousands are demonstrating in Tahrir Square and the interim cabinet resigned yesterday.

Anytime you have a family member in another part of the world, particularly a close family member, you are more naturally drawn to that place. In our case, because Egypt was our home and two of our children have their precious “Certificates of Birth Abroad” from Cairo it is even more natural to have our hearts drawn toward the region.

It feels a bit like last January and my mother’s heart is finding it hard to concentrate. Annie can’t get to her apartment. The fighting is too close and the tear gas is too strong. Even as I write this, it feels a bit like fiction. What? The tear gas is too strong? My daughter can’t get home because the tear gas is too strong?? It sounds like I’m making this up! But I’m not! It’s real. It’s reality. And she is someway, somehow coping with the displacement and anxiety. She is staying with a friend just a few minutes away, but far enough to be safer.

Just as I’m concerned for Annie, Annie is concerned for her cat. Her cat is alone in the apartment and the food is gone. I get it. It’s those little things during times of displacement that can hit you the hardest. An animal that relies on you, and you paralyzed from outside circumstances, unable to help.

It’s times like this when I realize that I am called to live out my blog posts. It can be far easier to write about the God of the details, and far more difficult to live it. It is one thing to passionately speak of Capsules of Hope, or Connecting the Head and the Heart, or any number of other blog posts where I share my heart, but I’m not called to write alone. I’m called to live out what I believe, what I write.

So today I publicly claim how difficult it is to live out a blog post. But I also claim that even though it’s difficult to live it, I still believe that God is still the God of the details, God of the distracted and sometimes He is even the God of the blog post.

Related articles

• VIDEO: Tahrir Square ‘part two’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Egyptian Security Cracks Down In Tahrir Square (npr.org)