The Cost of Hope

by Alecia Klauk
(Chapin, SC)

In this moment, my Beloved husband Brian is on a flight somewhere over the Atlantic on his way to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He will be there for a few days, and then he will go on to Mbale, Uganda. I am a handful of hours into what will be two very productive but hard weeks.

Today, even while I am swimming in purpose and vision, my heart still aches. My Brian and I are extremely symbiotic, and to be apart is extremely difficult. I told him yesterday that I had a card for him in his bags that he should read when he was missing me. He asked if he could go ahead and read it. We're pretty unashamedly mushy. The distance just stretches out over every inch.

Add to the equation the heavy hearts of our five children, and you begin to get the atmosphere in my home tonight. They adore their Daddy, and he is incredibly invested in them. I am so grateful that the father of my children has such blessed relationships with his kids.

For all of us, this is hard. But God has asked him to go. We just must understand the cost. And yet ...

My heart is also so full of the comprehension of why we are doing this. I should start by telling you what this is.

Brian is going to be spending a day with one of our Compassion sons, Stephano. He has no daddy, and so Brian will be able to father him, even if for a day. Then, he goes on to join a team that will engineer an orphanage in a very remote village. God could not have been more clear that he was to make this trip, has provided the extensive funds needed, and given every assurance of His will and way. It is a high and beautiful calling my Beloved is on.

But today, as my sweet children wept with broken hearts, that vision felt a little clouded by the cost. In the airport, as he walked down a long hallway where we could not follow, he went backwards to keep blowing kisses. My plan was to stand and watch him until I could see him no longer. But when he got to the end, he turned around and kept waving. It hit me that he had the same plan. And I knew he wanted the assurance of knowing that we were ok. He was going to wait until we were out of sight to move.

There the cost really hit me. We are giving away this precious man for a few weeks so that he can go and give to other people for what will prayerfully last a lifetime. We let our Daddy go to those with no daddy. We choose to weep for a while so that their pain can be relived permanently in some small way. We will feel loneliness for a bit to comfort those who live in desperation all the time.

It is such a small price, but today, honestly, it feels expensive.

And in that sorrow, I cannot let go of the truth that this is no uncharted course. The trail has been paved by the One whose sandals I am not fit to untie. I am only walking in the footsteps of Jesus, albeit clumsy and missing many, many steps.

Jesus gave it all. He asks us only to give some.

Brian is going to those who want him to come, and he will be welcomed. Jesus was rejected by those He came to save.

Jesus gave the ultimate love at the ultimate cost. We are to know the fellowship of His suffering, and even in my melancholy today, I will not pretend to compare the cost of His calling and mine.

It is hard, but it is not all. This is a tiny piece of death to self, but it is not death itself.

But even in that knowledge, I also still know that my Jesus loves me enough to see my feebleness and know my heart. My humanness does not irritate Him. He knows the depth of my adoration for my man and knows that I need His comfort. And while I try to see the proper context, I also reach out with trembling hands to the One who knows where I ache.

And so I must abide, remain deliberately in the safety of His lap, and train my mind to take every thought captive.

I also cannot forget Isaiah 58 that reminds me to spend myself on behalf the poor and gives great promise when I do. I cannot escape the truth of Romans 10:15, declaring Brian's beautiful feet as he carries the good news. This verse was so in my heart at the airport that I leaned down and kissed those beautiful feet before he boarded. I am listening to Jeremy Riddle, who is reminding me that "to love I must echo the love I have known, so I will be faithful to love as required, a love shown by obedience." I weep knowing the truth even while I just miss my Beloved deeply.

And I have to tell you, as difficult as today is, the week has been worse. I had to go through the deep emotional turmoil of very purposefully laying Brian on the alter. I know that there is always risk, but where he is going holds the potential for many different risks than our everyday life. That makes it much more intense.

I had to grapple through the possibility of him not coming home. There was no way around that thought. I had to yield everything.

But God is faithful to sustain me. He enabled me to look into my Beloved's soul and weep, "Even if you do not return to me, this is still right." I know that this is where we are called, and I do not look back, having placed my hand on the plow. I know and trust the plan.

I also trust the holy heart of God that created the plan. I know that He offers no guarantees of anything but His presence, and yet, I am becoming more and more desirous of nothing else. Nothing less.

I lay claim to nothing save Christ. I have nothing else. And even my precious Brian, the deepest kernel of my feeble heart, cannot be higher than my Jesus.

And so today, I am aware again of the great cost to serve the King. He asks for it all, to forsake everything else. To lay down my life and pick up my cross. It is not always easy. It is not often easy. But it is right.

When this journey intensified for me a few years ago as my Brian took his first trip, I had no idea the turmoil my heart would be challenged to withstand. I am such a sensitive person, and the awareness of suffering in the world has been suffocating to me at times. It is not easy.

But there is an intimacy in that brokenness as my head lays upon the chest of my Rabbi to hear His heart beat for the world.

I remember very clearly one morning in worship asking Jesus if I was to hurt forever with such intensely for the needs of the world. His answer shocked me. He said so clearly, "Yes, Sweetheart. If you want to be like Me."

My brokenness in imagining the hungry cannot compare to the intimate, even cellular knowledge of what a body needs but cannot have. My outrage over injustice is based merely on what I know, what is reported, what can be known. He sees the deepest depravity of the heart that fuels the prejudice that keeps the needy needy. I read statistics of those dying, while their Maker watches them suffer in the loneliness of a hut. He knows that which I cannot.

As He revealed these truths to my heart, the Isaiah in me was screaming, "WHY?!" Why then does God allow those in so much need to suffer? Why did Jesus say to His disciples in Mark 14:7, "The poor you will always have with you"?

The end of Jesus' statement gave me an answer to my illusive why. The rest of the verse says, "... and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me." So we are to help them because we no longer have Jesus in the flesh to serve. Wow.

And so even while my heart contemplates the cost of serving, I think I am more struck by the cost to not serve, to ignore their cries, to walk around as if there is no need. I cannot. I think the Church cannot.

And tonight I am overflowing with incredible gratitude that the Lord has given my man the honor to go and serve the "least of these" in His name. I am so delighted to follow a man who would go, even though my going with him in heart necessarily means that I must stay behind. I am just so grateful to be here, even in the midst of the pain in my gut that screams at me from time to time. I miss him terribly, and it's only just begun.

Please think with me about the cost to serve. The cost of going to serve those who have such need. The cost of delivering hope. It is not easy, as I feel in full this night, and Jesus did tell us to count the cost.

But at the same time, let us also contemplate the expense in ignoring their need. What beautiful things we may be ordained to do that we might miss for wanting to spare ourselves emotionally. Your call is your own, and no one looks exactly the same as the next. It doesn't have to be Africa. It just has to be obedient.

And Church, we must be obedient. We must go where we're called, no matter the cost.

I'll let Jeremy take us out: "So I will be faithful to love as required, a love shown by obedience. Lord, I'll be obedient."