Don’t be Afraid— Bad Things Will Come
My baby was two months old before anyone other than myself, her father, or a nurse held her.
She would be three months old before my parents met her, and 6 months old before she met Paul’s parents. I’m trying to describe the indescribable, trying to put into words the grief and excitement of those you know meeting your baby. The joy of them holding her mingles with the sorrow of moments forever lost. They will not know her five-and-a-half pound heft in their arms. They will not know her slate-grey, newborn eyes. They will not know her as I did. It’s a card forever clutched to my chest; a card I wished the whole table could see.
This year life stood still while time moved on. Weddings and funerals and school years and jobs and graduations and births were expected to pause while we all experienced a global sorrow and a collective unknown. Except they didn’t pause—most things still happened, just in isolation. Things that should have been brilliantly special were covered in a thick, dark blanket. They were supposed to be celebrated, but instead were sequestered into corners of time, and we will never get those moments back. Elopements replaced the wedding banquets and school moved online and babies were still delivered. But the celebrations paused, and the beams that were meant to support us in all the highs and lows fell; the communal experience we rely on dissolved in a matter of weeks.
Our daughter bears the name of Paul’s grandmother, a woman whose loveliness is unmatched. Our plan was to have our baby in April, to fly to Texas to see Gugu in July. Before she was born we picked out an outfit that our daughter would wear while meeting her namesake. But our baby was born a few days shy of April, and we couldn’t fly to Texas in July, and even if we had, her outfit would have swallowed her tiny 5th percentile body. I grieved for weeks as no one knew our child. I cried for months not knowing when our daughter’s hand would wrap around her great-grandmother’s finger, when her smile would wash over her family like warmth from the sun.
With no end to the restrictions of this year in sight, we drove many miles and hours and toured the country so that our family could meet this baby. This baby whose name reflects good news. This baby who would bring us delight and pleasure in days that are dim. She has been our joy, and it has been my desperation to share that joy with those who love her from afar.
We have all been asked to give up immeasurable things this year. We have all be asked to deny ourselves and give up the unfathomable. This year has held moments of bitterness and blight. It has also held my daughter. It has also held me and you and everything and everyone in between. This year has wrought us with fears and challenges which were inconceivable a year ago. But we persevere, despite us not wanting to. Despite us not knowing how. We are believers in Jesus Christ and his resurrection, and we are called into a conviction of courage, a blessedness of hope, and a triumph of bravery.
I have seldom been brave or bold or anything of the like. But I have been called by God into an endurance of suffering. I have been caused to gaze into the flames of the proverbial furnace and claim my God is good “even if.” Even if he does not spare, even if he does not save, and even if by His cup I drink deeply of suffering and pain. So to you, I say, fellow sojourner of strife, it is because of the certainty of suffering that we do not fear rather than in spite of it.
It was not because Joshua’s life as leader of Israel would be easy that the Lord commanded him to fearlessness. It was not because rebuilding God’s city would be easy that Nehemiah exhorted the returning exiles to be unafraid. Jesus repeats throughout the Gospel accounts: do not be afraid. He says it to those he heals, to those he meets in desolate places, to those he teaches, to those he loves. And it is not because he is calling them into a life that is primarily characterized by calmness and serenity.
Upon the acceptance of Christ, our lives are redirected to holiness by way of pits and valleys. It is because he is calling us deeper into darker places, spaces which we previously did not inhabit, places that we would have never chosen to go on our own that we ought to be bolstered in a confidence that only he can provide. He is bringing us into the cracks between rocks and hard places. If things would be easy and light for the Christian, there would not be a need for exhortations of fearlessness. It is precisely because we are given into situations that are frightening that we ought not be afraid.
Our call and conviction to be unafraid and courageous is required by the assurance that strife will come, not by the assurance that all will be well. It is precisely because there is difficulty that we are beckoned into courageousness rather than being called into it because we are guaranteed a softness of life. This life will not be soft to us. We are courageous because of the suffering, not in spite of it.
These days are not without purpose, and we have already endured far more than what we thought we would ever face. These days were meant to be as they are, and we were meant to live among these moments of suffering with a measure of fear. Our feelings and frustrations have merit; they lay the groundwork for spiritual formation. In these moments we are being forged and wrought and kept and forever called into a fearlessness that only Christ can sustain because only Christ has endured.
