“Remove fear. I collected it through events and accidents. I cannot take it to Africa. I will not stay there in this state for one day. Remove fear and fill the empty space with joy.” As I wrote down these words of prayer in early July this year, I did not realize what path was still ahead of me before what I asked for would happen.
During these last six months in Mozambique (October 2020 – March 2021), I was scared like never before. Successive minor and major illnesses and ailments in our family led me to the place where I woke up in the morning and looked at my body with the fear that there was some new rash or something grew on it. Before I made my first movements, I searched for pain in my body. And in the evenings I was falling asleep with the thoughts of choice. What is better? That Jo’s head be cut off first, and I will look at it, or that it be cut off first from me, and then from Jo. I don’t know exactly when I got to this place. A place that I could not clearly judge due to paralyzing fear, and therefore without a way out visible to me. Today I see how symptom by symptom and circumstance by circumstance I let fear control me. Until I was unable to return to a place of peace with God – the one that would keep me in Africa, beyond all understanding, in healing and without fear. But before that, something else happened. I was worried about Jo. It’s the door through which fear has entered and taken control of me.
When I came to Poland, I felt safe in the hands of the doctors. But it quickly turned out that more ailments and diagnoses appeared. And then a thought came to my heart that I had not faced then, but I knew that soon I would have to: “I flew all the way from Mozambique to Poland to find out that only Jesus could heal me.”
It is a process. Deep, personal and still in progress, so I’ll just throw in a few thoughts here.
First, God said He is the One looking after Joseph. This sentence came like a hurricane that swept away the rush of bad thoughts first. And He made room. You know what it is like when He speaks. The sky is ripping open, yet your heart remains whole and at ease. Completed. Sure. With the truth that cannot be disputed.
But as it was time to return to Mozambique, fear reappeared. And with it the awareness that it will not be so easy to go back. Go back and stay. Then I found within me the prayer I wrote about at the beginning.
When you are afraid of losing your life, you stop seeing the future. The distant years are shortened to the nearest months. And yet you want to keep them so badly. When you are ready to lose your life for Him, suddenly, clearly, in a deep breath, the future appears and expands. This is one of the biggest changes that has happened to me recently. I stopped being afraid of death. Once again. Without it, I couldn’t go back to Mozambique.
Each of my fears vanished from the blow of God’s Word, which I believed more than what I saw and what I was told. “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8)
You learn about your victory in silence. I think so when I fall asleep and I’m not afraid anymore. God’s Word is my constant. It does what it says. I want to be chronically healthy. Not out of fear. But because this chronic health was provided for me on the cross by Jesus. That I can love without limits, wherever He sends me.
I am writing about all this so that we do not get cheated. Because I also knew God’s Word when I was moving to Mozambique. And yet the coincidence of events and my weaknesses has led me to a dangerous alley. Let’s not be fooled. He has already conquered the world. (John 16:33)