Mary Fichtinger

All in this Together

July 7, 2020 By Mary Fichtinger

“We’re all in this together.” What does that even mean to people?

Art in the Hudson Bay echoes our need for rescue.

We each bear invisible wounds that are common to man but experienced in deeply personal ways. We are each engaged with an invisible enemy that has tactics we would never anticipate. We are each completely suspended by a grace we don’t understand, yet think our minds have somehow accurately mapped out the truth about things. By March of 2020 I had just spent three of the most difficult months of my life clawing my way through days and nights, drawing the will and ability to endure from the grace of others. Flinging myself onto invisible hope that it must be true: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. His rescue is the only way through certain valleys and shadows. (There are times when we can be fully secure in God’s goodness, sovereignty, wisdom, and kindness, and feel the suffocating weight of humanity’s sinful wretchedness, vulnerability and despair. Jesus put on flesh to bear it for us, and it killed Him.)

I’d thought by March that the gentle Shepherd was about to give me the time and space to heal some deep and old wounds. To rest a body and soul wearied by trauma on all sides, year after year. To bring refreshment and re-orientation, relief from every self-sufficient way of doing life. I thought I was being given a moment off of the battlefield and in my own hospital bed…

Enter Covid-19.

The whole world needs emergency medical staff. Some places need it yesterday. I had tools in my belt that I did not pursue, fashion, define, or establish: emergency medicine training, credentialing, and experience. But not just that… also familiarity with being in way over your head. Functioning in a necessary, decision-making capacity where nobody really knows for sure what’s best. Knowing you’re all still relatively helpless to rescue the dying, even if you give it all you’ve got. Knowing you’re going to get it wrong. Recognizing the face of fear, pain, inability to lift your own head, death. Isolation in your suffering. Survival depending on the grace and given-ness of others. I’m acquainted with this territory. And with the powerful God passes through the fire WITH us.

Turns out as He allows the desolation of the world’s false saviors and arrogant presuppositions, scatters our human wisdom and topples the towers that will never reach us to heaven, He unites us at our perfectly uniform core: dependency. Every nation, tribe, and tongue. Every diagnosis, complication, multidisciplinary team. Every lifestyle, economic status, religion, career. We all so want it to be okay. We want to be okay. We want to decide and accomplish what we think is good. Want what we understand or feel in control of to sustain us. We want not to need someone else to do our breathing for us, clean our waste up for us, take control of managing our very survival. But we do.

The brother of humble circumstances should boast in his exaltation, but the one who is rich should boast in his humiliation because he will pass away like a flower of the field. -James 1:9-10

How simply humanity can be experienced on a hospital floor where everyone has the same diagnosis. I cared for previously-healthy 34-year-olds (miraculously) fresh off of 3 weeks’ mechanical ventilation, and 95-year-olds fresh-on to hospice care. Listened to the grief of the just-widowed, recovering to go home alone. Listened to the moans of previously-healthy 60-year-olds who were still blankly existing in some encephalopathy we didn’t understand yet but knew to expect. Listened to the gratitude, hope, and plans of those who’d recovered and got to wheel down the hall to the elevator that would take them off the Covid floor and back to their families. Listened to the last words of one whose 87 years had taught him a few things. I used translator services to accommodate half a dozen languages on one floor. The nations were gathered together at Mt. Sinai of all places, crying out for hope. We cared for Hindu, Catholic, non-religious, superstitious, Evangelical; secured oxygen on the drug addict, the home-health nurse, the homeless, the 9/11 hero, the homosexual, the undocumented immigrant, the mother-and-son pair, the husband-and-wife pair, the mentally disabled, and the accomplished professional. Sent one man out to a crowd of celebrants and cameras, and sent one man to finish his course alone in a hospice bed.

We’re all in this together: We are in desperate need of rescue.
So bring your diagnosis, bring your prognosis. Bring your dwindling bank account, bring your overtime check. Bring your “essential worker” pass and bring your pink slip. Bring your home school, home office, hope for a new season, and grief for what’s already lost. Bring your black funeral dress and bring your dancing shoes and cowbells. Bring your black eyes and empty bellies and chains of injustice. Bring your privilege, your voice, your provision. Bring your awareness and bring your ignorance. Bring your broken heart and bring your comfort zone.

Bring it here, to the feet of Jesus, and let Him do with it what He will. We’re all in this together. And He’s telling us it’s time to do things differently. Listen to Him.

Demolition

July 7, 2020 By Mary Fichtinger

Last year in school the boys studied ancient history of the world and civilization. This included, of course, the accomplishments and failures of mankind, some of which seemed to one in the same because of the division of the human heart. Example: the tower of Babel. Eager for acclaim and self-confident, that mighty hunter Nimrod with his men tried to build their own way to their own definition of triumph. Their success at invention, innovation, and accomplishment revealed the enormous capability of even a tiny image of God, while their disregard for His sovereignty barred them once again from true knowledge of Yahweh (which Jesus said is life itself).

So He had to scatter them. What is even the power of “autonomous” man united, except dust in the wind when you can see eternity?

He gave them different languages. He reminded them the reality of human limitation. He revealed the inherent divisiveness of pride as in frustration and futility they finally migrated apart with those who could understand them. Then they could actually discover that big, beautiful world God had created for them in the first place. Isn’t His kindness magnificent, even in what felt harsh? Remember: you are not your own. Remember: there is so much more goodness for you if you go ahead and step into what I made you for.

I love practicing medicine. It has been a gift from God to me, and one that I’d never expected or asked for. It is a privilege, an honor, a joy, even as it bears so much brokenness in so many ways. Truly, you could listen to endless debates about what’s right and what’s wrong with any healthcare system in the world, and they may all be correct at some level. The current pandemic has flooded the world with grief, fear, and confusion. It started with the healthcare system, but is certainly not ending there.

This is what I love about Covid-19: YAHWEH is working good for all with eyes to see. Only the truth can set us free, but often… the truth hurts.

He is laying waste our idols. He is reminding the medical community I know and love despite its many ugly faces that it is no savior. He is reminding the developed world that it is not self-sufficient and certainly does not have all the answers. Neither is it a savior. In dramatic fashion He is unveiling the worldwide pervasiveness of injustice and our ineptitude to rightly respond (or even care to). He is toppling our domino foundations of finance and opportunity. He is giving free speech to millions of voices that don’t know what they’re talking about in hopes we will finally recognize the confusion and contradiction. He is also awarding this generation with an unprecedented opportunity to turn off all the outside deceiving and distracting voices and meet with the Truth in the closet. He is knitting millions of families back together even as He also discloses the tragic darkness hovering under the surface of so many others who were convinced that they were making it, even if just barely. He is putting the ways of man on exhibit as only a global crisis can accomplish. He is putting our own hearts on display as we respond.

Everything that can be shaken will be. And everything will be revealed and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. We’re appropriately appalled and distraught at the recognition of all that is unredeemed.

It is mercy to see things as they are, which is, at core, maybe not what we always thought. And only unseen things can teach us that. But the best news is that this is not the end of the story.

When Rains Fall and Waters Rise

December 25, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

WHERE IS GOD WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN?

With us.

In fact, perhaps the “bad things”, while truly and deeply painful and sometimes sourced by an evil, don’t end up so “bad” as we originally experienced, if they teach us that simple but profound and eternal truth in a fresh, living way.

These are weighty words to write. I’ve encountered a fair share of suffering, but I recognize there are faces of pain and threats of fear that I’ve never felt and never desire anyone would.
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Because our one God is so vast and transcendent, we could never comprehend Him through a single name (or many names, for that matter). The Scriptures give us numerous names for our God, that each describe a different immutable trait of His, and help us to understand how we are created to relate to Him.

If you’ve ever been truly desperate in a high-risk situation, where the outcomes are critical, then you experienced the arrival of perfectly-timed and perfectly-sufficient help, whether you’d cried out for it yet or not, you recognize the powerful revelation of Elohe Tishuathi: the God of my Salvation.

You’ve encountered Ehyeh asher Ehyeh: the Eternal, All-Sufficient God.

I want to paint you a selection of small portraits: the stories I was introduced to day after day in the EFH in Freeport. It is a different thing to practice fast-paced medicine with total freedom and appointing to address to the spiritual needs your patient presents. To have colleagues that will step in and step up in order to accommodate a conversation that is sovereignly ordained for such a time as this. There were days that I felt futile, where it seemed like all I treated were minor chronic issues that seemed to be keeping me from my children and my responsibilities back home. Then would come these encounters of profound significance and I was reminded that I was sent here on such purpose, and there were things God wanted to say through my mouth, my testimony. He also wanted to tell you about these people, these children of His who are your brothers and sisters, who have a song to sing above the noise of the storm, and the dead-silent absence of so much in its wake. Here we find Immanuel: God with us.

He was a healthy-appearing 44 year old with a spirit of contentment, patience, and gratitude. He presented with an abdominal mass he’d never noticed until he’d lost 40 pounds finally came to the doctor. He endured eight hours of trying to coordinate a CT scan to evaluate what had been growing inside him, just behind his skin, just out of sight. From what we had, it appeared to be multiple myeloma that was so advanced he has little hope of recovery. Blindsided, transferred to Nassau for best chances, he was exceedingly grateful for help. That God had His eye on him and would sent him answers and assistance as he prepared for a yet more difficult storm. He thanked El Roi: the God who Sees.

One mature, praying woman poured out her heart to me as I tended her in the tent hospital. “Our God is a jealous God. He wants the hearts of His people. He has washed away our idols. He wants the hearts of His people.” She had heard from El Kanna: the Jealous God, who desires His people worship the one who gives them life, not slowly steals it away.

A beautiful young woman dressed to reflect her perspective of herself, eyes full of shame that couldn’t meet mine without a prompt, asked for an STD check. Told she was worthless, she had nowhere else to find hope. After a quick pelvic exam, behind the makeshift privacy screens constructed of tarp and PVC piping, she confessed with her hand laid over her heart that she believed this Jesus really did love her, honor her, wish to redeem her even from here. She confessed she needed Him, and she wanted Him. She was born of the Spirit in that moment. The curse broken over her sweet soul. And grace poured out from Jehovah Moshiekh: the LORD Your Savior.

I asked one elderly woman, “Do you have everything you need: food, clean water?” “Why, of course!” she almost giggled. “My husband and I aren’t very strong but we are caring for our entire neighborhood. Every house was flooded except ours. We don’t live on a hill, so I don’t know why, but God spared us. The water stopped at the front yard. My daughter in the States sent us supplies, and we are giving them out to our neighbors. A few people who lost their homes have been staying with us; they just sleep in the living room. Yes, dear, we have everything we need.” She worshipped Elohim Machase Lanu: God our Refuge and she gave away what was being supplied to her, trusting her Jehovah Jireh: the LORD who provides.

A pastor recalled the flood to our distribution leaders, out searching for people in need of supplies. “The flood came quickly. My son slept on the second flood, and I slept on the third floor. He ran up to me when the waters entered his bedroom. Soon they had filled the third floor also. The roof caved in on us, and I was trapped under a beam while the water tore him out of my arms and I watched him be swept away, crying out for me. For two days I was under the beam until they rescued me. Then I found they had rescued my son from the top of a tree where he was able to grab on. We are alive.” He is Elohim Chayim: the Living God. He is Jehovah Mephalti: the LORD my Deliverer.

She had waited until the last minute, then knew she had to pick up her children and run for high ground. They did, and the house was erased down to the posts. She praised God she had followed Jehovah Roi: the LORD my Shepherd.

A schizophrenic man who received little respect or autonomous voice had an urgent ophthamologic need to save his one functional eye, and was brought in by his sister who’d come to check on him. We had a select few specialists available, but one happened to be an ophthamologist, who was willing to promptly respond to our call for consult. He performed minor eye surgery on him in our ICU area, after I repeated everything to my patient for his consent, refusing to regard him in the third person as we discussed his care in front of him. The urgent care nurses poured themselves out during a very busy shift, so that one of them was at our patient’s side for the entire procedure, treating him with utmost dignity and compassion. The clear statement was made in Jesus’ Name: He is Jehovah Ezer: the LORD my Helper, who had personally arranged for immediate care by the exact specialist he needed, precisely in the absence of most specialized care.

The stories don’t always end in easily-recognized “success”. The three year old boy had a complicated medical history, unbeknownst to us on arrival. He seemed so stable but renewed our attention with a severely abnormal chest x-ray. Suddenly he deteriorated. It was so fast. His grandmother wailed on her knees and begged God to take her instead. God had already taken the boy’s mother Home, and she was raising him now. We worked for an hour and did everything that modern medicine can. We wept with all who loved the child as we wrapped his body and let them hold him one last time. It was our second pediatric code of the afternoon. But here we clung to our Elohei Mikkarov: God Who is Near. We all together put our hope in El Shaddai: the Almighty God, whose breath of Life cannot be quenched by a shadow of death for those whose hope is in Him.

The young mother came to me, 20 weeks pregnant, bleeding and hoping she was not about to lose her child to an incompetent cervix, again. The local obstetrician was called in. The report followed the exam: it was too late. She was partially dilated and the amniotic sac was protruding. They may as well induce her to “finish the job.” We admitted her on bedrest and we prayed. The next morning the processes had reversed. They were able to place a cervical cerclage successfully. The baby was still alive and growing in a newly-secured womb. Please continue to intercede for this little one and his mother. Cry out with us to Elohim Chaseddi: the God of My Mercy.

One sister was eighty years old and two weeks late to have the sutures removed from her face. They told the story of her drunken fall when she was trying, as she did every night, to chase away the loneliness and anxiety with liquor. She was too embarassed to look up at me, and too anxious to sit still on the little cot. Elohei Chasdi: God of my kindness, goodness and faithfulness, called out to her and invited her back. Reminded her that she is never alone. He is her husband, His family is hers. He has good work for her to do. She wept and shared how she used to be a Sunday School teacher, and she just wants to go back. He is the One she is most lonely for. She repented on that little cot and lifted her face, full of joy, mind set to find a church where she can serve food to the people who need more help. She walked out hand-in-hand with Jehovah Mekaddishkem: the LORD that Sanctifies You.

They ask, “So you’re all from South Carolina?” “No,” I answer, “I only knew about three of these people before I got here last week.” The testimony of the Body of Christ from all across the States, indeed, across the oceans, united to serve their people in a time of need has them astounded. “We’re all here because of Jesus.” “God has sent you to us,” our patients exclaim in thanks. Yes. And only by Him would we go. He reveals Himself ‘Or Goyim: Light of the Nations.

Twenty-seven, and utterly downcast, she spoke to me in a whisper. She had bought abortion pills from some lady off the street. She’s been bleeding for two weeks but is still feeling pregnant. She submits to an ultrasound that reveals a living baby, 11 weeks and 2 days, stretching her womb and her asking for her heart. She is distraught. She already has three little mouths to feed. One son has a brain tumor and she can’t keep up with the doctor visits. They’ve just lost everything to a flood and are staying with her mother. Her great shame is that the father is the same-old man who abandons her while she carries his children. But she carries God’s children who mean more than their neglectful father suggests. Each one bears a message of hope and future. They’ve all had her heart and her mother’s love contorts her face as her circumstance tries to wrestle her child right out of her. She asks me to prescribe another abortifacent. I tell her that right now I’m caring for two patients, and cannot do for one what will kill the other. It resonates in her gentle but desperate soul. She listens to the story of an unplanned, un-asked-for pregnancy that introduced the sweetest blessing a family could hope for. She is deeply encouraged to hear of one whose high-needs child has brought overcoming strength through weakness, because GOD cares for His children. She walked out with her head up, courage on her tear-streaked face, and His liberating permission to love her child. She had turned her ear toward Peleh Yo’etz: the Wonderful Counselor. She honored El Hayyay: the God of My Life. She was invited to call upon Elohei Ma’uzzi: God of my Strength. I was so encouraged to see her a week later, while she was bringing her son for evaluation, and see her smile in eagerness for her prenatal appointment.

A middle-aged, eastern European lawyer traveling from his home in the UK arrived in Freeport to check on his business in Grand Bahama. He was feeling poorly, called his wife (who was in France) and told her what was going on. Concerned for his heart, she google-searched hospitals in Freeport and urged him to come to Samaritan’s Purse. His disconnected story and anxiety didn’t communicate much clinical urgency, but his rapid, irregular pulse did. His arrhythmia became potentially fatal that night, and his cardiac function was minimal. Some quick work by the DART cardiologist God had sent to meet him right there saved his life, and his response to the good news that Jesus wants to give him more than just physical healing saved his soul. Jehovah Rophe: the LORD my Healer, had pursued him across the globe in the context of a hurricane that destroyed his business, in order to heal him forever.

I asked one woman who’d endured the hurricane huddled in her home how she’d managed. “Oh, I had the rainbow,” she answered immediately and confidently. “What?” I inquired. “The day before the storm came, there was a big, beautiful rainbow spread across the sky.” “I saw it, too,” a woman next to her exclaimed. “I saw it, too!” echoed a third woman down the row. She declared, “All through that storm I held onto that rainbow and I knew that my GOD would never leave me. I still have that rainbow.” She is forever anchored in El Emunah: the Faithful God.
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We (any and all of us, the Body of Christ) go because He is there. We leaned hard on Jehovah Shalom: the LORD our Peace. We held tightly to Jehovah Immeka: the LORD is with You. We clung to Him for ourselves, for our families, and most of all for the beloved ones He sent us to serve in His name. Our God does not hold back when it comes time to save. Romans 8:32 calls us to attention: “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” This reaches beyond material and systematic relief that any reputable NGO can provide. When it’s time to move, He gives Himself to the people He loves. So we, His Body, joyfully identify as one of His most valuable resources. And following Jesus’s perspective, we are to be spent with an eye toward a more abundant life than we could ever experience by holding onto ourselves. He gave up His very own body once, and He will continue to extend it because He is Jehovah Moshiekh: the LORD who Saves.

Thank you for sending us. We could go without you.

DART: Bahamas 2019

November 18, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

Mary deployed for the first time with Samaritan’s Purse DART team September 22 through October 11. We thank you for praying. If I could tell you all of the stories of where and how miraculously we saw God moving in the place of crisis, they would be endless. For length’s sake, I’ll follow this email with one that holds more personal stories/reflections. I would highly recommend that one if you are limited on time and are more interested in discovering the non-physical relief that God has provided. Here I’ll give you an overview of the physical work, a bit of clinical storyline for those interested, then some photographs

Above you see our EFH (Emergency Field Hospital), as well as our sleeping quarter tents in the back. The hospital has an Emergency Dept (ambulance in front), male and female wards, an ICU and step-down, as well as an operating theater. Staff rotates through critical positions, each person present for as long as they can be (typically 2-8 weeks at a time). During my three weeks there I worked with several emergency and family medicine physicians and NP, an orthopedist, cardiologist/internist, and three general surgeons, as well as numerous nurses, from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. (The total DART team, composed of the hospital staff as well as hospital maintenance and bio-engineering, security, housing, supplies, logistics, distribution, chaplaincy, etc, numbered about 140-150 on the ground at any given time, and had volunteers coming from every continent except Antarctica by the time I left.) We had surgical staff composed those freshly-finished with fellowship, and those who’ve operated for 40 years all around the world. Hearing the stories of multiple team members and how they’d gotten there was a treasure. My truest heroes on hospital staff were our pharmacists, laboratory technician/pathologists, and radiology technician, who ran the entire hospital, 24 hours a day, for weeks at a time because there was only one of them available at a time. The sustaining grace of GOD was proven in infinite ways for each of us personally, as well as corporately.

Our hospital was set up in Freeport, Grand Bahama. The island most heavily affected by Hurricane Dorian was Abaco, where our non-hospital team members went by helicopter and boat to provide shelter and blankets, clean water, food/cooking supplies, and power generators, and to find people in need of medical care. Local people were also provided post-traumatic counseling through the Billy Graham Evangelical Assoc. chaplains. The stories and the despair often marking the patients who’d arrived from Abaco spoke of the devastation more surely than the news cameras can. We had teams moving throughout Grand Bahama providing the same services as given on Abaco. Freeport had many buildings still standing, but the flood had literally washed away everything from a great deal of them (sometimes down to the studs), and simply destroyed whatever was left inside.

Statistics for the relief effort on October 1 are as follows. I know that we had seen about 1,800 more patients by the time I left on the 11th, and I expect the other numbers also increased accordingly.

Covered over 60 houses/community buildings with tarp
Distributed over 8,300 tarps on Grand Bahama Island
Distributed over 500 generators and over 6,000 solar lights on Abaco Island
Provided over 170,000 liters of clean water
Deployed over 120 staff including DART, IHQ, and IFS
Transported over 279 metric tons of relief supplies on 14 DC-8 flights
Received over 2,500 patients at the Emergency Field Hospital since September 10th.

Here are some photos to give you a feel for our days. Tim (above) is an extensively disaster-experienced NP with whom I ran the triage/urgent care segment of the hospital, along with two of the nurses (Karen, Emily, or Hallie) pictured. We worked 12-14 hours, seven days a week, and saw 120-170 patients a day in our little tent. (In the photo of our compound, the front left corner has an open-air waiting area; ours was the smaller tent between it and the main ER) It was clinically interesting to watch the phases of disease we saw. The first wave of providers (before me) saw all of the acute wounds from both the hurricane and the flood. We did a lot of wound care follow-up (plenty of diabetics who’d waded in flood water for days and had horrible skin breakdown), other general skin rashes and infections from the floodwaters, hypertensive and diabetic crises since all their medication was literally washed out to sea, arthritis flares because so many cars were gone and people had to walk everywhere, as well as their physical labor to strip everything that remained out of their homes post-flood. Then we saw innumerable cases of exacerbated allergies and respiratory issues from the extensive mold on the island, followed by severe asthma attacks when the islands began to burn. We saw so many babies and young children in pretty dire condition with their asthma, and were so thankful to provide immediate relief. Their nebulizers and medications were gone, the local hospital was not available yet, and there was nowhere else to go for help. The fires came both from people burning their rubbish, and from uncontained brushfires. Only once was our compound threatened by fire. We were ready to evacuate the patients if we had to, but all paused and prayed for rain and a change in the wind. Within minutes our patients were sitting up, eyes wide and jaws dropped, as we heard the sound of raindrops falling on our tent! Finally a wave of gastrointestinal illnesses cropped up, though nothing was looking like cholera just yet. There was already access to clean water available, but not everyone was using it.

We were the only functioning hospital in the upper Bahama Islands, and housed one solitary operating room. As such, in addition to the disaster-related diagnoses, we also saw all of the typical things: heart attacks, strokes, violence (gangs and drug systems woke back up about my second week in) and road trauma, perforated viscus, appendicitis and cholecystitis, arrhythmias, and LOADS of congestive heart failure. There were many people who had been unable to afford or access cardiology care for years that came to us just then, because they could finally get what they needed, free of charge, in a timely fashion, in Jesus’ Name. God sends HELP and HEALING in our times of greatest need, that reaches more deeply than our immediate relief. This was only further evidenced by the number of tumors, hernias, and various other problems that our surgeons were able to electively repair over the time we were present. There are some interesting clinical photos below. Some of these procedures are not life-saving, but truly life-changing for the patient. This was especially true of the keloids that had rendered people subject to constant ridicule and rejection over the years. Long story short, we saw a very interesting combination of disaster/first world/third world medicine in our time!

I got to sit in the cockpit of SP’s small aircraft on flight from Nassau to Grand Bahama, where the local airport was just getting ready to open to public transport after some basic clean up. Below you see clockwise: the blue tarp our team had already covered dozens of roofs with, as well as the EFH compound in the center; a sweet young patient I got to serve, ER nurse Quinn working with national staff to manage and stock the crash carts, morning devotions, and team prayer at shift change. You can imagine how amazing it was to work in a hospital staffed completely by people there on mission, very intentional and strategic, and highly focused on doing the most good they could for as long as they were there. It was an incredible privilege.

Oriel was a key Bahamian pastor who worked with us and helped coordinate local efforts.

On the morning I was to come home (along with these two who had poured themselves out for weeks), a small aircraft crashed on the runway at the Nassau airport. We never heard if anyone was injured, but the incident effectively eliminated our chances of getting home that day. We were wrestling through disappointment until we heard Samaritan’s Purse’s DC-8 cargo plane was about to fly home (which just so happens to be a two hour drive from my house in South Carolina) after it’s last supply drop in Grand Bahama. They rushed us over to it, loaded us into the small passenger section, and took us home. One extra day would not have made a big difference ultimately, and the airlines would have rearranged our flights, but we were so exhausted and mentally “finished”, ready to be home with our families again. This final gift from our Father (along with the hot lunch and fresh fruit and cookies they served us on board) had me in tears most of the flight, as I recounted His goodness in both such seemingly trivial and monumental ways.

There you have it! Of course there is so much more, and I am so thankful to have kept a bullet journal for almost every day I was there. The days were fast-paced and overwhelmingly filled with such significant content. On these brief deployments there is not really a day off, so God’s grace to me was displayed in even allowing me to remember key events at the end of the day, and I continue to process them in time. The work was hard, and the reality of the suffering was heartbreaking at times, but the absolute treasure of spending that time and energy in such a way is worthy of its weight. I saw the very heart and hand of GOD in densely concentrated fashion, and that is the truest blessing we can receive.

I am so grateful to be home with my family, and so grateful to have a family I longed to return to. There is no limit to the depth of goodness and grace He has poured out on His children, and I am overcome by its extent. It is truly more than I can bear, and He leaves me speechless and weeping time and again. To know His lovingkindness in the context of suffering is foundational and transcendent at the same time. I pray you find it today in whatever challenge you are facing.

Thank you for partnering with us and praying for us. We truly could not do what we do without your prayer support, encouragement, and financial investment. Thank you for sending us to give all we can to see Jesus glorified in all the earth!

Accomplished

May 25, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

To write an update this week feels insufficient. I can give you words, but there are no sufficient words for the significance of the events.

Look what the Lord has done.

Two years ago, on May 21, our youngest son Elias James was baptized to tell the world that he believes Jesus is the Son of God, that He died and rose from the dead to save him, and that, for all a seven-year-old could comprehend, he will follow Jesus with his life. He grows and fights forward, aware of his need for grace and a powerful Savior. He is a force, he changes us and the world around him, and there are good works planned for him to fit right into.

A few hours later, early on May 22, Anna Michal Joy was born to us. Our gift unrequested, unexpected, and incomprehensibly precious. She has also challenged and changed us all, and the story of redemption our life-giving God is writing continues to bless us beyond measure. There has been new hope, new joy, new awe, new love. We have laughed uncontrollably, melted repeatedly, behaved ridiculously, and navigated infancy and toddler-hood again as novices.

Last night, May 24, Habiba Kathryn walked to graduate from high school. Seven years ago she waited inside a fenced compound for this family to wrap its arms around her for good. She came to us as a twelve-year-old full of hope, expectation, idealism. (She quickly learned we’re just people, but we are God’s people who will love her no matter what.) She didn’t speak English, but was immediately surrounded by friends, tutors, family. She discovered Jesus within months, “In my heart I always loved God, but I didn’t know who He was. Now I know Him.” Seven years in an imperfect family that lives believing hard in redemption and grace. Seven years to know, at the core, to Whom she belongs and to grow her wings. Now she graduates without any delays, ready to fly away in pursuit of dreams she’s discovered through Jesus.

How could I appropriately express the profundity of all of this? I will simply leave you with this week’s Psalm, which just so happens to be Psalm 126.

Restore Our Fortunes, O Lord

A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the captives of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us;
we are glad.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like streams in the Negeb!
5 Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
6 He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.

Step Into the Light

May 25, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

March, 2019

I’m listening to a recording of the first song our oldest daughter and I worshiped to at Passion 2019 in early January. Scraggly-haired, toboggan-topped Sean Curran lead 10,000 18-25 year olds to “Step Into the Light” as we entered three days set aside to pursue Jesus above everything else. This trip was the (extravagant, for us) Christmas gift God had led to give her. Life has walked us through the most some of earth’s most hellish places, and we’ve been rescued and redeemed in a way that we’re just beginning to see the glory of. (All of us who live by the life of Jesus have this story with incredibly unique details, but just as glorious redemption.)

Jesus is with us. There is no greater reality in existence.

This changes everything, meeting with Jesus.

Really giving Him ourselves. Our time, first. Our attention, our minds, our hearts and emotions. Risking the vulnerability that He really is with us to save us, and be okay with Him saving us from ourselves. He is so good, kind, patient, and full of joy to make us free with the freedom of Heaven. Free from darkness, fear, confusion, futility.

A core theme of walking with God is in 1 John: walk in the Light. This is where we have our created-for fellowship with God and with one another. But… there the terrifying thing is: the risk of exposure. We have these deep but hushed fears that if we step into the Light He/we/others may see that really we’re not that strong. Really, we’re not that good. Really, we’re not that loving, wise, capable. Definitely not as lovable as He/we/they thought. Really, we’re not sure that HE is as strong, good, wise, kind, right as He says He is. That Jesus’ track record of mind-blowing love and humility might stop with us, and He might not really be able and willing save us in all the ways we need saved. So we hide out close to the Light, but in a responsible degree of shadow. Where we can feel the glow but not risk being consumed by a burning fire.

For the conservatively-discipled subgroup, it usually it takes a crisis of some sort (praise God for difficulties), or a grace-filled burst of reckless, bold faith to step out in full-fledged exposure before Yahweh. Not that He didn’t already have perfect discernment of every dark corner of our hearts. And we learn, again and again, that staying in the light is the only place to be. Darkness can’t hide so long. Sin can’t strangle us for so long. Deception loses its roots when we stay in the light. When we let Light overcome the darkness, as it always will. When we live like repentance and rest is our salvation (Isaiah 30:15) rather than our crushing efforts to improve and overcome, we find ourselves… delivered.

He doesn’t weary of saving us. His work is finished, and His love is diligent and steadfast in a way we can’t fathom.

Maybe it’s true for you, too, eh? Maybe it’s time to set aside a weekend. Take a vacation day. Make the intentional decision to turn your eyes toward the King of Heaven and give Him what life demands most of you. Sometimes we stop at giving Him our money, our Sunday mornings, all our best intentions and efforts. Go through the labor of stepping into the Light and going back again and again and again, every day. Look at Yahweh in His Word, in worship, in His Spirit. See what He’s said and agree with Him. About Him, about you, about this whole world and life in it and beyond it. True worshipers come in Spirit and in Truth, and the Holy One makes a way, takes us in, and makes us complete, abundant, victorious, perfected, cherished, sufficient, wise, courageous, significant, secure, forever… because He is. Come a little closer into the Light. Risk true worship today, tomorrow. If there were one thing I could give you (and myself), it would be a greater taste of the Presence of God.

Let it be, GOD! We hunger for You. We need You more than breath. We want you more than anything this world has to offer. There is nothing that compares to You. Nothing like You. Jesus, You are high and lifted up and we need more than anything to see You and understand who You are. Give us a greater hunger for Your presence, Your word, Your truth. Help us turn our attention to You more. Fill us with faith and hope and an unstoppable drive to stop at nothing short of touching You. Capture our attention, and give us grace to position ourselves to see You. In Jesus’ Name.

I. as if they were

January 18, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

We serve a God who, according to Romans 4:17, loves to establish and reveal what’s true. Only, it’s not what we thought things were…

[He is] the God who gives life to the dead, and speaks into being the things that are not.

He’s let us know how little of even the measurable electromagnetic spectrum we can see… and there’s certainly more out there than we’ve figured out how to measure in our most advanced ways.

And yet… we walk by sight.

Oh, even if we have seen through Webb telescopes and electron microscopes and history, and we can remember what is (and acknowledge our typical oblivion to it)…

nasa.gov

visualsonline.cancer.gov

…we walk by sight.

But we are people of faith!

We have the faith to breathe deep the clean air in our backyards.
The faith to step out of bed onto a floor we believe will hold us up.
The faith to actually expect we’ll make it to the office intact.
The faith that our medication just might work. Our check just might get deposited. Food will be at the grocery whenever we run low. Our spine will hold us upright all day long. We’ll understand the words we see on the page. Etc, etc, etc.

So I suppose the question presented is what we’re putting our faith in.

Perhaps the painfully truthful short answer is: ourselves.
Namely, our perception and comprehension of the world.

What we can “see”.

We trust the air because we’ve always breathed it. We mindlessly trust gravity and floorboards and vehicles because we’ve used them for some time now, and know how they work. We’ve been taught to rely on science and doctors and pharmaceuticals practicing evidence-based medicine (though, rightly, not everyone has equal confidence).

Maybe we understand microbiology, but she has a grip on cause and effect, so the bush mother doesn’t trust the water without boiling it. He never studied forces, but the post-landslide villager doesn’t trust the ground to be solid under his next step. The misused and exploited child doesn’t trust a gentle touch to be safe. We live on the same spinning sphere with all the same rules of physics, but vastly different understandings of this world. Is it safe or unsafe?

So while we acknowledge that our resources for accurately interpreting the reality of our surroundings are quite limited, and our unawareness of those limitations is perhaps the biggest one… we walk by sight.

We operate according to a system of familiar experiences, ideas, and values at work in our lives. But at some point we’re struck with the reality that the sum total of our entire existence’s capacity is ridiculously minuscule. Mid-life crisis? Awakening? A drop of wisdom graciously laid on ignorance?

But if we re-arrange our lives according to our limitations, even if we do re-direct, how much better off are we? We need something far bigger than us in order to say we’ve placed our trust wisely.

The Lord founded the earth by wisdom and established the heavens by understanding.
Proverbs 3:19

Lord, Your testimonies are completely reliable; holiness is the beauty of Your house for all the days to come.
Psalm 93:5

Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or who gave Him His counsel?… Who will you compare God with? What likeness will you compare Him to?
Isaiah 40:13, 18

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9

“You have heard it said…. But I say….” -Jesus, repetitively.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”
Jesus, Mark 9:35

“You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and have revealed them to infants.”
Jesus, Luke 10:21

“What is a man benefited if he gains the whole world, yet loses or forfeits himself?”
Jesus, Luke 9:25

“Not My will, but Yours be done.”
Jesus, Luke 22:42

These all died in faith without having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place: a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:13-16

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Prov 9:10

Let’s spend a few posts reflecting on some discoveries of this truth about “things that are not” that God calls HIS. You have a thousand such stories from your years, also. Think about them. Let’s be transformed as our minds are renewed by a living Word, Spirit, and story.

Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God… In Your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that passes by, like a few hours of the night… Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts… Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:2, 4, 12, 17

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