As I write this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop barely holding it together. And in ten days I’ll get to experience this all over again, to some degree. We had the blessing of having our son and daughter with us for the holidays this year. In years past, we’ve made the journey to them, but this year we decided we’d do Christmas here. And we have had (and are having) a great time with our kids. There’s no three other people on the planet that I’m closer to than these three. But, today we took our son to the airport for his flight back to Texas. [For those who don’t know, in my social media posts, I often make posts called “Captain’s Log,” and our son is the XO (Executive Officer) to whom I often refer. Caryn is First Mate. Our daughter is the Security Officer (when I started the Captain’s Log she was working as security at a Texas hospital.).]
Back to the point of this post. With our daughter, she is on a trajectory to do work like we do, and her summer plans have brought her thru Budapest. We think this coming summer will be no exception, and that we will get to have a few weeks with her. But with our son who works full-time and doesn’t get to travel as much, there’s way more gap time between seeing him, and we often don’t know when the next time will be. Over the last 24 hours, I’ve been hammered by that reality: saying ‘goodbye” to him this morning comes with a heavy “until we meet again,” and it’s been much heavier this time than the other times we’ve said “goodbye.” The train ride back into the city from the airport was a somber moment of taking stock and asking if the work we do is worth the sacrifice. Even now, sitting in this coffee shop, I’m wrestling with this. If I stick to the debate of work vs family, family wins, and should win! But I think that’s reductionist thinking because it’s more than work. In the fall of 2009, our family felt and discussed (with each other and with trusted friends) a calling to pursue Christ’s calling to the work we currently do. Yes, work is involved, but it’s the calling, not the work, that we chose to pursue. We knew when we said “yes” to this calling that there would be sacrifices but we believed (and still believe) that obedience is of highest importance.
My August 15 blog post was about boldness, proclamation, and suffering in the lives of the apostles. Little did I know that what I’d been reading over the summer and even in the penning of that post, would be such a profound sense of loss and suffering this morning. I could rationalize the whole situation with thoughts like, “If we lived in Texas, how much time would we really get with our son or daughter?” or, “Being overseas with digital technology provides a greater connectivity than many have in the world today.” BUT, that’s not really the point, is it? The point is, and where I find myself landing in each emotional loop of the last 24 hours is that Christ knows and called us anyway. Christ knows how sent-out ones suffer around so many family-related things and chose to send us nonetheless. Does He not care if we suffer? Does He take so lightly the depth of our love for our kids and family? He does care about our suffering, and He does not take lightly the suffering of His people, which means He has an answer for me, even if it’s to simply say, “Trust me.” The struggle of suffering is to allow that trust to bring comfort in the midst of the suffering. So, that’s where I am. And I’d appreciate your prayers for us as we lean into Jesus in what has turned out to be an unexpected season of joy AND pain, a season of sacrifice brought on by obedience. Despite the way I really want to wrap this post up with some profound thought that will revolutionize this whole process, I can’t. I’ll just end it with this: He is worthy of it all.
