We’ve now reached the one-week mark of the latest phase of the ongoing war with Iran.

It feels like a lifetime.

One week ago, I was sitting at my favorite nail salon, getting cute little turtles and waves drawn onto my nails for my upcoming family reunion in San Diego.

And then everything changed.

I sit here now, one week into a period of incredible stress, and my primary feeling is one of gratitude.

Gratitude? Yes, gratitude.

I am grateful to my tiny country for standing up to terror in the most miraculous of ways; for fighting for what is right and good and true.

I am grateful for the brilliant, technological minds that keep us as safe as possible with world-leading innovation and technology including phone alerts before sirens, the Iron Dome, and an array of other defense systems.

And for the safe rooms that truly protect us when those deadly missiles get through and blast into our sacred land, aimed to kill our people.

I am grateful for the strength of spirit of those around me.

For the brit my husband stumbled into last Friday at 5:30 in the morning, only a few hours after the start of this stage of the war. The new baby’s father received a call to reserves and managed to get the mohel and the brit together while the sun was still rising that first day.

For the neighborhood that gathers around and checks in on each other, seeing which reserve wife needs babysitting, which older couple needs grocery shopping, who needs a home visit and who needs their dishes done.

I am grateful for the wedding music blaring through my window last night. For the wedding that wasn’t postponed, because we don’t postpone such occasions; for the quick change of venue to the family garden and the incredible joy and singing we heard through the evening.

I am grateful for the people trying to get back home; for the people standing on the water’s edge in Cyprus begging every boat to take them back to Israel; for the people clamoring to return to our war-ravaged country because there is no other place our people want to be when we are in trouble.

I am grateful to the security forces – so many soldiers and undercover intelligence personnel – who are currently fighting on the front line for us in Gaza and in Iran; and to those who are training night and day in the sweltering heat to be ready.

I am grateful to my entire office, and to my team of mostly young parents. In the face of school cancellations, missile alerts, sleepless nights and anxiety, they still manage to get their work done from home, to laugh and joke, and to show incredible professionalism and perseverance.

And I am so grateful that we are here, living in our homeland, with front row seats to the face of history. Don’t get me wrong. These are terribly, terribly stressful times. And I feel for everyone stranded outside the country, everyone who has lost their home or had theirs damaged; everyone who has been injured or lost their life to this terrible evil; everyone struggling to make a living in these trying times; everyone dealing with years of war.

But we are on the right side of history and we are part of the miracles unfolding before our eyes; even as we deal with terror and fear; death and displacement; childhoods altered; trauma and uncertainty.

While we run to the safe room again and again; and pray for our own soldiers and those of the nation; and watch our younger children yet again miss out on the end of the school year; on freedoms, on naivete; I am overwhelmingly grateful for my life and the opportunity to shape the future of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people in our time.

And for all of this, I am eternally grateful.

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