For several weeks ice covered the sidewalks and streets and the snow and rain seem like it would never stop falling. Before Christmas until a few days ago we have shuffled to and from the center in sometimes zero degree weather with snow in our faces and ice under our boots. I have fallen three times and almost fell a dozen other times. For some reason a lot of people don’t shovel in front of their homes and so after days of people pounding the snow down it eventually turns into ice. Though we love winter, we are thankful that spring will be showing its warm face soon.
This weather has made going places difficult with a six month old especially since we have to walk everywhere. So for the most part, Robin has had to stay at home with Lukas during the day while I go to the center. Or sometimes I stay with him a couple of hours in the mornings or on weekends while Robin goes to the center or to church or after groceries. Like I said, we are ready for spring so we can open up the windows, take walks together, and just get around easier without worrying about falling or worrying that it is too cold for Lukas.
Another reason why we are ready for spring is the reality that most of our families are running out of or have already run out of wood to keep their homes warm and dry. Unlike us who live in an apartment building with radiator heat, most of our families if not all have stoves in their homes for heat. They have to use wood. So it has been common this winter when asking several of our boys why they didn’t come to the center the day before or why they didn’t go to school to hear that they were out collecting wood or transporting wood or buying wood. Even today I was at the home of the two children I work with and their dad was telling me that they don’t know where they will get more pieces to burn. Please pray for mercy and for God to provide what it needed for the children to stay warm and dry and to have the means to keep going to school.
Also, three of our families might be getting kicked out of their homes sometime this year. They live in housing provided by the city and many of them have debt and so are unable to pay the bills. Please pray for grace and mercy.
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Lukas is doing well and is healthy. He is growing so fast. I have heard parents say before that they couldn’t believe how fast their child grew up. I didn’t understand it then but now I do. We are trying to eat up every moment we have with Lukas.
We love being parents. Granted, Lukas has been an easy baby just crying when he needs something and sleeping 12 hours every night (7pm to 7am) since before he turned four months. But the more we spend time with Lukas and take care of him and the more we interact with and get to the know the children at the center, we are being more and more affirmed in our calling as parents. We have been thinking a lot and praying a lot and looking into what it would mean to be parents to children that do not have parents. Please pray for us as we seek for guidance and wisdom in this area.
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Lately I have been thinking a lot about brokenness—my brokenness and the world’s. Being an idealist and a dreamer I have the tendency to view the world in how I want it to be instead of how it really is. Or for me personally, I often think and dream of the person I want to be instead of accepting the person I really am. The reality is that the world is a fallen, broken place. And I am a broken, fallen man. I have always known this in my head but I don’t think I have accepted it. I didn’t want to accept it. And so, consequently, in many ways I have always been disappointed.
Lately I have been coming to this realization of brokenness when I walk through Galati. I see the run down buildings, I see people fight for their place in line, I see people who are begging, and I see women who are prostituting. I have also come to this reality while working with the children at the center and hearing their stories and hearing about their families and then a deep sense of pain and hopelessness comes. And it has taken me to screw up and hurt those around me again and again to see the reality of who I am—a wounded, broken person.
But what do we do with this brokenness? What do we do with this reality?
Lately I have come to the realization that I have to accept life how it is. I have to accept all of the brokenness and hurt and injustice and suffering and poverty just how it is. And I have to accept myself the way I am. Of course as Christians, we are called to be little Christs in the world in helping to put it back to rights and as Christians we are called to seek Christ which is our attempting at holiness or sanctification, however which way you like it; but at the end of the day, the reality of suffering and death are still there right in our faces, right in our families, right in our hearts and we have to face it.
I am realizing that the more I accept my own brokenness and the brokenness of the world, I am freer to live in gratitude and joy and freer to live without fear. I can accept the reality of my own falleness easier so I don’t have to live in guilt and self-hate; and I can accept the woundedness of someone else easier without getting bitter or upset when they offend me so forgiveness can be given and received. I can also accept the reality of the brokenness of the world without feeling I have to play God and repair it all.
But ironically, this acceptance of brokenness makes me want to throw myself more fully into the reality of the world to work for its change and it makes me want to love more. Accepting this brokenness makes me think of what Paul says in Galatians…that we fulfill the law of Jesus Christ by bearing each others’ burdens. I think he also could have said, we fulfill the law of Christ by being broken with each other and sitting with each other in that brokenness. Maybe by bearing each others’ burdens Paul meant to accept the reality of brokenness and to deal with it together in love.
I pray that by sitting with each other in our brokenness, by sitting with ourselves in our own brokenness (in our humanity), we are becoming what we are supposed to become—little Christs to one another. The great mystery, the hope of glory—Christ in us and among us! (Colossians 1:27)
Always with love,
Josh, Robin and Lukas