Mary Fichtinger

Another calendar year is ending. How can we thank God enough for…

Jan/Feb– Australia chapter nears an end. Fetya experiences Summer of Service with other teens. Bob and Habiba stay in Perth for DTS, while Mary & kids say goodbye to people and a place we love, then return to the U.S. to stay with Mary’s parents. A sweet time of reunion, transitioning again, and being re-defined to an unexpected phase of life.

Mar/Apr – We move back into our Ft. Branch home, a gracious gift. Habiba’s off to her outreach in Nepal & Philippines; Bob comes home. We love serving again at Bethel. Homeschool teaches us all humility, perseverance. God confirms our next step into long-term work with SIM. We visit Charlotte to explore housing and potential ER jobs. God says Wait. I will provide.

May – Eli is baptized; eleven hours later, Anna is born. Life, twice over, is profound. Our God is mighty. Our family lives afresh deep in the wonder of birth, bonding, love… and there we grieve afresh the fallenness of death, loss, sin. We are scarred by the second, but utterly defined by the first. By the first Family, perfectly faithful, that breathed us into being, has walked with us every single step, makes all things new. We are defined by Father, who reconciles us to Himself through a cross, and supersedes every separation even suggested. Praise His Name.

June/July – Habiba braves crossing the Pacific alone and is home, changed again by the One who loves her perfectly. That this would ever be our story. The Fichtingers arrive in Charlotte, NC, to train with SIM for work with Sports Friends. We’re called to this. To be the weak-made-strong in Jesus. He authors this story. We ever believe Him to BE the One to make all this dust into gold.

Aug/Sept –  Shakamak Bible Camp for the big kids: Samuel’s first year.  We enroll in southern IN schools. Mary works one day a week in ER. The kids are so happy for cross country and soccer season! Bob & Mary persevere in full-time team building. Habiba is hired at a local restaurant and Fetya referees soccer, blessed with good early work experience.

Oct/Nov – Bob visits Sports Friends in Thailand to meet the Int’l Communications Team, serve at a soccer camp, further prepare. We cast vision in Bible studies, AWANA, FCA. That the Lord of the harvest would send out laborers. Our support team grows. We’re so thankful for the Body of Christ, and for lessons in patience, trust, uncomfortable obedience. God cannot fail.

December – Up goes the Christmas tree, and our eyes toward the Advent of Messiah. He has come, He is coming. Glory to God in the highest!! We miss last year’s little paper tree, but are so happy for a Christmas in our Southern Indiana home. These gifts of times & places make us rich.

The psalmist said, “You are good, and what You do is good” (Ps 119:68). YES! In our sin He is patient; in our repentance, He delivers and redeems. In our weakness He sustains and moves powerfully. In our obedience He brings wisdom, grace, supply. No good thing does He withhold from them that walk uprightly (Ps 84:11). Thank you for pursuing the Living God with us. For upholding, defending, and joining us through your prayer. For your friendship and encouragement to us and our children. For sharing material provisions as we serve fully in a field not materially reimbursed. We are truly members of one another (Rom 12:5), and we pray you are also honored and led to worship our magnificent Father in all we offer to Him together.

Until He returns,
the Fichtingers

End of year giving.

It’s a different season of life for me, for us. I’ve lived seasons here. Lived seasons there. Lived seasons here with the heart to be there…

Don’t we do that? So easily, whether loudly or in our secret depths, wish and dream of something else? Sweating out summer months, aching for the cool and harvest and beauty of autumn. Begging for the warmth and resurrection of spring when we’re locked up in the throes of icy winter.

Not all of you live in four-seasons areas, and only know of them. I’m so thankful to have grown up in routine awareness of multiple seasons, and how they shift and morph. I do know some people who love those extreme seasons: the scorching heat of summer and the fresh stillness of cold winter. But I don’t know anyone without shelter that prefers them. Left exposed to them, the extremes are deadly.

Don’t we know it in so many ways? And when we live in the extremes of soul, of spirit, of body, we cry out to God for relief. Respite. Rest.

God is our refuge and strength, abundantly available for help in trouble. (Ps 46:1)

For your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3)

There are times I wish for the understanding that farmers have in much more fullness. The Kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows -how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:26-29)

These seasons keep changing, layered upon layer in various contexts of life: mine, my marriage’s, my children’s, my extra-family assignments. I’m planting, waiting, watching. Pulling a lot of weeds. Digging up rubbish and chasing out pests. My own little garden is very consuming, and I say in an acutely aware dependency, I’ve learned  it is enough. What God gives is always enough. (2 Samuel 12:8b) Enough to be content with, to be grateful for, to be overwhelmed by, to be sustained in.

He chooses our inheritance for us, the glory of Jacob whom He loves. (Ps 47:4)

To grow in. To discover in. To be shaped or pruned or straight cut-down in. To bear fruit in the midst of.

It’s been a season of suspension… a waiting, nurturing, hidden-ness in a sense. There is much to come, and I sense a growing anticipation of further development and change for this season, the longer I press in here. What exactly tomorrow will look like for me, I don’t know yet. But can I say how thankful I am for all the seasons, past and to come?

In just eighteen years trying to learn what it is to walk with Jesus I’ve seen days of passionate field-planning, vision-catching, risk-taking, heart-rending. Planted, cultivated, fertilized. Waited. Waited. Waited. Seen famine and seen flood. Seen harvests more bountiful than I could hold. Rested in fields of green with soft rain and blinding-beautiful foliage, and danced in the celebration of abundance. Grown faint in the fiery deserts that spanned impossible and impassable miles. Laid down and died in a dozen new ways, in the death-cold dark silence of winter. Been struck by hurricanes, and seen cleansing winds blow away debris too big for me to conceive. Made space for new life, and buried earthly life’s remains. Held such things in my hand, too sacred for me to have imagined, and given my heart to One too holy and good for my greatest hopes to fathom.

Can I say I am grateful? To You, Holy One of Israel. To the Living God. The One named Faithful and True. The God with us. The only wise God, our Savior. My Rock, my Hiding Place, my Wisdom, my Love, my Life. My lips will glorify You as long as I live. Apart from You I have no good thing. Who am I that You are mindful of me? Yet You’ve hidden me within Your very Self, named me with Your Name, and written my days. You see my smallness and assign my significance, and You alone are wise and good. All You do is right and true, and Your ways are too great for me to comprehend. Thank You, thank You. 

And let me be found before Him in every season. Receiving the goodness of it, sowing seed that I-know-not-how-it-grows. Steadfast celebrating the nearness of my God, and waiting on Him for the growth and the harvest. I am at rest.

 

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly man for Himself;

the Lord hears when I call to Him.

Be agitated and do not sin;

Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be silent.

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, 

and trust in the Lord…

You have put gladness in my heart, 

more than when their grain and new wine abound.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep,

for you alone, O Lord, make me to dwell in safety.

Psalm 4:3-5,7-8)

It’s something I think about often these days: the power of presence.

Namely, the Presence of God.

To me, it’s a matter of life and death. I’ve visited the place of a literal inability to continue, but for the powerful and tender, good, holy, faithful, and intimate presence of God. The life He has given me in His lavish generosity, in His creating of life and hope and opportunity, in His zeal to overcome evil with good, in His jealousy to disallow affairs of the heart, in His challenge to invest well… I cannot live this life apart from the knowledge of His Presence.

The greatest news on earth is that Jesus, our very Savior, was named God with us: Immanuel.

So I seek Him, everywhere. (And God help my failing eyes.)

 

 

 

I’m back in the ER just one day a week now. I’ve already had to make one of my least-favorite diagnoses in someone presenting with simple-seeming complaints: a new mass. Some ugly-looking thing where it doesn’t belong, threatening wellness or life, sending vague signals over time, and finally being found out. Twenty years after the last round with cancer was won.

But God is with us. There, in room 19, surrounded by concerned family faces, discussing cancelation of trips for the upcoming tests, processing the blind side of painful & life-altering news once again. He is with us.

Just like He was with us when I found masses in my own mother’s heart and lungs.

Just like He was with us when the social worker told us we may never get to bring our (Ethiopian) children home.

Just like He was with us when we did.

Just like He was with us when we said goodbyes and packed up to move across the ocean.

Just like He was with us when He authored little Anna’s life and brought us back earlier than we’d planned.

Just like He is with us while we wait… for progress, for growth, for strength to keep waiting, for revelation, for courage, for external peace, for the end of some things and the beginning of others. We wait, and He is with us.

And… He Himself is our Peace.

 

 

Come and see the works of God,
Who is awesome in His deeds toward the sons of men…
Who keeps us in life and does not allow our feet to slip.
For You have tried us, O God;
You have refined us as silver is refined…
Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance.
I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings;
I shall pay You my vows…
Come and hear, all who fear God,
And I will tell of what He has done for my soul…
Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer,
Nor His lovingkindness from me.
– Psalm 66

 

 

 

“there’s a reason that the road is long;
it takes some time to make your courage strong”

– Hard Love, by NeedtoBreathe

A couple of weeks ago our church had its annual day at the local campgrounds, with service in the Lodge followed by an afternoon of fellowship and lots of fun activities. Events like this seem to time-stamp us, don’t they? We can see where we’ve been and what we’ve come to today. It’s been two years since the Fichtingers were able to attend Camp Carson Sunday, and those two years have changed us in measurable ways. Besides the growth of physical ability and independence in our (5 big) children, we loved to see the development of courage and determination in them.

This was particularly evident in the boys, now aged 7, 9, and 9. Two years ago only one even wanted to try the zip line… but changed his mind when we got to the top of the tower and looked out (and down) over the lake. This year all three of them went! Abe & Eli made the first exhilarating ride across and down into the water with Daddy, and we later learned repeated the feat with their sister or friends! Our biggest surprise was learning Samuel (who’s our most risk-averse child) had gone right at the end of the day with one of his buddies. He’d seen his friend in line for the harness and just casually joined him. They walked all the way around the lake together, climbed up those three stories of wooden stairs, got harnessed up and hooked in, and bravely jumped off the platform in full faith and fun!

I asked what the difference was this year (because I don’t think he’d even have imagined doing it a few months ago).

“I became brave,” he said.

His friend had invited him; he said yes.

He’d watched other people go down enough, and now he trusted it.

Watching others encouraged him to join in without any verbal persuasion.

One child right in front of him changed his mind on the platform, but he’d already decided to do it, no matter what.

What a privilege to see this strength and courage in our son!

The Scriptures are given to us, full of the evidence of God’s faithfulness and sufficiency. We have His own direct words to us stating who He is, the stories of what He’s done, the expressions of His strength, love, and nearness to us. That we would see & hear Him, believe  that when He leads us to places high or terrifying, we can jump when He says “I’ve got you.” He’s got us all the way.

Lord, give us the courage to simply believe that You are who You say You are, and You will do what You say You will do.