November 2009
The hummingbirds already seemed to have left. The squirrels are gathering their nuts outside while I write. And the leaves are already turning their golden yellows, bright oranges and reds. They are falling and falling as quickly as they seemed to have grown. Fall is here, it has been here and Old Man Winter is beginning to waken. It is bittersweet to leave this beautiful Indiana fall. And it is even more bitter leaving you all. By the time many of you receive this letter in paper form, we will have been back in Romania for a week. For those of you who will read this sooner than later through email, we will be leaving here in a week and a half on October 24th.
We have so much enjoyed our time here and are so grateful for our healthy, sweet, beautiful baby Lukas. But now since we have his passport, his vaccinations almost completed and all of our bags packed (almost), we are heading back to Galati to our friends there we have missed so much. We look forward to showing everyone there our precious little one that kept on growing and growing in Robin’s belly during the pregnancy. It seems premature to leave home, it always does seem that way leaving the place and people we love so much but the time is here and the sweetness of the bittersweet leave seems to be tasting sweeter as we come closer to leaving and being united to our friends in Galati.
We have so much missed seeing our children that we work among everyday. We miss their smiling faces, their honest evaluation of life, the fun we have with them at playtime and lunch time. We miss talking with them in Romanian and miss going to the piata to pick up our daily groceries. We miss hanging out with our friends in Galati over coffee and dark chocolate in our apartment (To let you know, our dear friends found us a new apartment! It is a little farther from the center but it is still in a decent location. And it has hot water and a washing machine!). We miss walking everywhere and really feeling the change in weather day in and day out as we wait at bus stops. And we miss going to chapel every morning, praying and singing in Romanian, reminding us of our Crucified and Resurrected King who is close to our friends who live in the back alleys of Galati. So though it is so bitter leaving here, there is so much sweetness in returning to our friends in Romania.
But we wouldn’t be honest if we said that we think the transition will be easy. So we ask you to pray for our transition over. Pray that we wouldn’t worry so much that we forget Who to trust. Pray that we wouldn’t be so anxious about what could go wrong but to place our fears and anxieties in the Crucified One who knows fear and anxiety better than we do. Pray that we wouldn’t get too stressed out making the initial transition into a different culture but instead to be grateful for this unique time with our beloved son in a new place. Please remember us as we remember you all during our leave. And together, let us remember Christ today. Let us remember that He is with us.
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In just several paragraphs I want to share with you about what I have been reading in regards to fear and anxiety. I have been reading about this topic because it is relevant to us during this new stage of parenthood. Since Lukas has made his grand entrance into the world, I feel like I worry more and feel like I am a little more anxious than I used to be. With a brand new, innocent baby, life seems a little scarier and the world seems more of a darker place than it was with just Robin and me. There are so many things that could happen, so many evils things: sickness, swine flu, kidnapping, car accidents, plane crashes, _______. Just enter in the blank what you fear the most.
With this acknowledgment of my fears and anxieties has also come realizing how little I trust the One who I confess to follow. I also see how small I think Christ is. This past week I was reading in a book called Jesus Christ for Today’s World by the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. He has reminded me in this small book of the greatness of Christ. Moltmann reminded me that Jesus—God made flesh—has gone to the deepest and darkest places of our humanity pre-cross alone in the Garden, on the cross when he cries out My God, My God and the time after the cross before the resurrection.
Moltmann writes that during the Passion Jesus experienced and conquered the greatest of all of our fears. Jesus conquered the complete compilation of Death, Hell, Suffering and Abandonment on the cross. He says Jesus entered into these places so that we wouldn’t have to. We now have a Friend and a Brother who knows our fears and anxieties.
Moltmann writes: “If we believe in Christ, fear does not isolate us from God. On the contrary, it leads us deeper into community with him. Christian faith in God is essentially fellowship with Christ, and fellowship with Christ is essentially fellowship with the Christ who was tempted and assailed, who suffered and was forsaken. In our anxiety we participate in Christ’s anxiety; for in his suffering Christ went through the very fears and anxieties which men and women encounter too.”
If it is true that the greatest of our fears is abandonment, suffering, death and hell shouldn’t we be talking about how Christ, our God, entered these places, knows them, conquered them and redeemed them? This is for sure cause to celebrate, to walk in joy, and in all of the mess to hope for a New Day.
But why do I fear so much? Why am I so anxious? In my fears and anxieties, I need to remember that Christ is with me. Christ doesn’t necessarily take away my fears and anxieties, He walks with me through them redeeming me through the process so I don’t have to fear or be anxious anymore. I need to remember in the darkness of it all, that Christ is there. And not only that He is there as a Brother in suffering, but He is the One who will bring about a New Dawn who conquered Sin, Death, Abandonment and Suffering once and for all. He is the One who not only is there with us but has redeemed these things by His resurrection.
Moltmann continues:” The two images of Christ belong together. Without the brother in our fears is no fellowship with Christ; without the redeemer in his fear there is no liberation from ours.”
So let us walk toward our fears and anxieties knowing that Christ is with us.
always with love,
josh and robin and lukas