One of the things I’ve been worried about with the Syrian crisis and everything is what if, as happened in Sweden, a refugee commits a crime or even expresses an ‘ungrateful’ sentiment.

People are very fickle.

And sometimes people in difficult circumstances are at the end of their patience and might not express themselves in the best manner.

For two years the war in Syria raged and the world did nothing.

Then one picture touched the hearts of a lot of people and suddenly they wanted to help. That’s still good.

But yesterday I came across a CBC article where some volunteers had interviewed a Syrian refugee family and *gasp* the family was upset they were stuck in a hotel room, the kids had nowhere to play and they just wanted to go back to the refugee camp.

Oh, you should have read the comments!

It was so depressing!

And yet, I can imagine the same thing happening to Canadians if God forbid, we had a reason to leave our homes, travel to the other side of the world and subject ourselves to the often humiliating terms of being a refugee in a country where you don’t know the customs and you can’t speak the languages.

I remember when I went to Guyana, South America, the home of my husband’s family. It was my first foray outside of North America and what a shock!

I remember wanting to climb back up the stairway and get the heck out of there! And that was just a visit of three weeks!

How do you give your heart to a new country?

I know for sure that if I ever had to leave Canada, my heart would pine for it for the rest of my life.

I would miss the vast forests, the sweep of Rocky mountains and tundra and the mighty St. Lawrence!

How do you make a new country your home?

It must be a LOT harder than people can imagine.

And now in Denmark the officials are planning to take away any jewelry or money from the refugees more than $2000. My husband said, “What’s wrong with that?” And in some ways I agree, but in other ways I think it’s not a good idea. If they have some money, they can use it to set up businesses. And yet Denmark will be paying out to house them.

Many of these Syrians were prosperous educated professionals. Imagine coming to Canada in the middle of winter, where it’s grey and dreary outside, and your stuck in a hotel room waiting, waiting!

I heard they need a bunch of things like winter coats, socks, underwear, pajamas, running shoes so I went through all my closets and found lots of coats that we can give them. And I found new socks and gently used socks, and even as I’ve been packing them all together, these things we can still use but have extra of, I remember what this one lady I met who runs a Muslim women’s homeless shelter in Baltimore said. She said people like to only give the things they don’t have a use for. Basically garbage, things they’re throwing away.

And I desperately don’t want to be like that. We’ve donated a good chunk of money already, so I can’t afford to go out and buy new pajamas and underwear, but the running shoes, the socks and jackets, yes, we can do that.

It takes real effort to be able to imagine what people are going through.

May God bless them with the use of them. And may God make their transition be easy, and may they be patient and grateful and may Canadians be patient with them too.