May 31st, 2021

We’ve come to the last bend in the river… the pausing place. The place where we remember. The thinking spot. 

The place where the water first takes a sharp right, then a quick left, and is about to disappear straight out of sight… A definitive place carved out to take inventory - to consider…

Freedom

Traditionally, American culture sets aside this day to remember the men and women who have gone before us to serve and to give their lives for our freedom.

I sit quietly in this space to remember, to consider this gift… acutely aware that I’m not sure I can take the proper posture of gratefulness without first understanding from what I have been freed. 

I am proud to be an American citizen born abroad. My grandfather, a Polish Air Force pilot, served in the Royal Air Force during WWII. Personal stories of concentration and work camps in the Eastern bloc are woven throughout my family line. Words like suffering, loss, famine, separation, desolation, and despair flood the pages of our family’s history.

From an early age - maybe as young as five, I had a repetitive dream - more of a nightmare - that would haunt me night after night. [It’s not something I usually talk about anymore - and I’m certain I have never written about it. But for one reason or another - as I pause to remember tonight - these are the words that flow up and out…]

In this recurring dream, I would come to a long barbed wire fence, slip my way underneath, scurry across a short field, head up the outside fire escape to the upper floor of a city apartment building. A child would be passed to me. Quietly, we would make our way down the stairway, back across the short field, where we would slip back under the barbed wire fence, and run a short distance to the end of the next field - where I would hand the child off to someone waiting. I would then turn, and go back for the next child. This would continue all night until I awoke. By morning, on the nights this dream would occur, I was exhausted.

In my late twenties, I was asked to share this dream with a specific group of people. I explained it with little emotion - just as I wrote above. Afterwards, the room grew silent. They asked, “Is there anything else…” The only thing that came to mind was my life-long dream of working as a photojournalist in refugee camps in and around Israel.

Again - silence.

There I sat, the young wife of a Russian youth pastor - a somewhat overwhelmed mother of three little ones.

Quiet.

And finally one lone woman spoke… “To set them free. You will serve as the bridge to set your family free. You will take the atheistic family line of your husband, the muddled together family line of your own and you will walk the way of a martyr to lay down a new foundation for your children and your grandchildren. To set them free.”

It was heavy. Thick. Awful. Really it was…

I thought of my daughter, Ekaterina, named after the beautiful Russian pairs’ skater who suddenly lost her husband to a heart attack. Theirs was a love story I wished for. To date, it had not yet come true.

I thought of my son, Daniel Jacob… whose name was given to me in the midst of first trimester misery. I had asked God back then, “Jacob? That name means ‘trickery.’ You want me to name him that?” God had answered, “Yes - he will draw the line in the sand. He will represent all that came before him and all that I can do after him. Jacob.” His name literally means, “God is my Judge over Deceit.”

I thought of my other daughter, Leah… who came so suddenly and unplanned. Whose life had nearly been taken from us right from day one. Our little one who spent a month on oxygen trying to breathe. Named by God the moment she arrived… As I sat in the hospital, day after day, I began to read Genesis and the story of Leah, Jacob, and Rachel. “And maybe now my husband will see me, hear me, love me…” Leah’s quest was to find significance and value in the eyes of a man. And one day, Leah gave birth to her last child. She named him, Judah - Praise…  Along the way of suffering, she had learned the way of freedom… the way of God.

And as I concluded recounting the dream and the one lone woman finished speaking, I caved. I sunk low... “Why, God? Why me?”

“For freedom...”

And twenty-five years later - it has never been anything else… Freedom. Not my life - Yours. Not with arrogance, pride, or even great confidence… For His name sake.

Praise.

And after that conversation, I never had that dream again. Something deep had shifted.

On this day of remembrance - this memorial day, I think of another who came running for humanity… Leaving the glory of Heaven, God, in the flesh, walked amongst us. Pursuing His beloved. With a plan for ultimate FREEDOM…

He bore the suffering of death on a Cross - a Cross of rejection and shame. And three days later - He defeated death and rose to LIFE!

ALIVE… it’s the ultimate story of FREEDOM!

And for centuries, men and women pattern their lives after such a God… laying down their lives - mirroring the example of Heaven.