Merry Christmas 2018

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2018

FROM THE ERBSTS

Our 2018 started out with a bang!!!!  I went out to visit with Bryan in Ohio the weekend of January 19^th-21^st.  I flew out and had a great visit on Friday night and Saturday.

I left Bryan at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 20^th.  Not more than 15 minutes after I returned to my hotel room, I received a text from Jake that said, “Froedtert Transplant Center thinks they have a perfect match kidney for me!!!  They are calling me back after they confirm.”

On Sunday, January 21^st around 9:00 p.m., Jacob was wheeled into surgery to receive his miracle gift.  I was able to change my flight back home to land in Milwaukee and I arrived in plenty of time to celebrate with Jake and Emily (and Andrea) before the surgery.   Praise God!  Bryan was patiently waiting and praying in Ohio and was able to call frequently from the Chaplain’s office to check on the progress of both the surgery and the recovery. 

Jake is doing fantastic!  He has had a minor hiccup within the first 3 months, but since then he has been feeling strong and is back to working nearly full-time.  Jake and Emily are enjoying being free from the schedule of dialysis and commented how wonderful it was to have Thanksgiving morning free to sleep in and share with family for the first time since they were married!   Emily was blessed with a new job at the Clinic this year and is now an Administrative Secretary in Cardiology.  She seems to really enjoy the position and keeps very busy.  Their three-year-old daughter, Hope, is a real joy.  She has started taking ballet classes and loves it. 

Our daughter, Andrea, and her husband, JohnMark, are very busy with work and church activities and two very active kids.  

Abigail (Abby) is now 16 years old – how did that happen? She is a talented musician.  She plays trumpet, ukulele, and piano and is in the school hand-bell choir.  She has a beautiful voice and sings in the school choir, too.  She does very well in her academic studies, too.  Abby is the sweetest young lady and has gone on her first foreign missions trip this past summer with her daddy.  She has done a number of other mission trips within the USA, previously.  

Tyler, is 12 years old and also a gifted musician, playing drums, trombone and ukulele (he picked this up by himself) and can play piano a little, too.  He’s very bright and keeps us all hopping attending his sporting events.  He loves to play baseball, football and basketball.  It is so fun to attend these games and cheer him on.  

Andrea is an echo tech in Cardiology at the Marshfield Clinic.  She is studying for her boards later this year.   Andrea is on the Worship team at their church and sings and plays keys.  She is also part of a “band” called “The Pointless Brothers” that play for fund-raisers in our community.  It is really fun to watch her perform with this great group of musicians. 

JohnMark works at Counterform in the office as a drafting designer.  He is still active at their church on the Business Team, the Audio/Visual team and Finance team.  He plays softball on a couple of leagues during the summer and balances his games with Tyler’s games.  He is also usually involved in the sound system management for Andrea’s band’s gigs. 

As for Bryan and I, we are excited to look forward to 2019.   This is Bryan’s last year of his prison sentence.  In January, I will fly out to Ohio for one last visit and then rent a vehicle to drive him back to Wisconsin.  Bryan will relocate to a half-way house in Janesville, Wi for four months.  In May, he will be done with serving his sentence.  YAY!!!!  We both are so looking forward to building our relationship again and new beginnings.  We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we also know that God has a plan and we are excited to see what that will look like.

I officially retired from Marshfield Labs on October 19^th after 42 years of service.  I am enjoying every moment of retirement so far.   My goals for the next few months are to organize and purge the house to get ready for finding a new home, and downsizing, once Bryan is home.   I keep busy with the grandchildren’s activities and spoiling them as much as I’m allowed.  I am on the Worship Team at our church and enjoy the opportunities to praise God with my voice.  I have been able to get involved in some women’s ministry work and sharing with other women.  

We are so blessed and so happy to share with you all what has been an amazing year for us.   We are grateful for the support we have gotten and are thankful for God’s blessings.   You are one of those blessings!!! 

Merry Christmas to you all and we pray you have a blessed New Year!!

Bryan (McFreedom) and Jeannie

The Journey Home begins in the past

The Journey Home begins in the past

Lately it seems that my mind has been spinning on thoughts that are stuck in my mind.  Thoughts about my future, which is full of changes for me. I have been on the trail of captivity for the last 6 years and I am about to make a turn on the trail that leads to home. The thought of ending this portion of my incarceration and moving into a new phase of incarceration at a half way house and then finally making the transition to moving back into my home town, with all the challenges that will bring, causes me my share of fear and anxiety.  The past 6 years in prison have defined my life.  Now, that is all about to change.

I know these challenges should seem like good things to occupy my mind after spending 6 years in captivity.  But they can generate plenty of fear and anxiety as well;  both of which can be dangerous, if I let them consume my thoughts.  Before I was incarcerated these two enemies hung over me like dark clouds of a foreboding thunderstorm. Sometimes they overtook me and unleashed their fury battering my thoughts and sending me into despair about my future. Now, once again, I feel these same clouds approaching me even though I look forward to the hope of coming home.

Scripture teaches us, in Matthew, that anxiety and fear are common in this life.  Everyone faces these enemies at one point or another.  And we are warned, not to be consumed by them. Scripture also teaches us that we can overcome them. We don't have to endure their fury.  This requires me to trust Jesus at his word and to believe his promises to be true. When I don't trust and believe them to be true, those clouds are likely to develop into the perfect storm that causes me to feel overwhelmed and defeated. I have been in this storm before. I don't want to get caught in the middle of it without shelter. 

This passage tells me that I am taught that I need to have trust in Jesus.  A trust that says I will take shelter in his power; a ruthless trust that conquers my deepest fears. This is something I had learned before I was incarcerated.  Back then I was a faced with a very uncertain future; a future that looked dangerous and risky and filled me with fear.  God showed me then that I did not trust him fully.  So I finally surrendered my fear and anxiety to him and committed to trust him with a level of conviction that Jesus will do what he promised.  This is not so easy for a man like me who likes to have control over his future.  Well, does anyone have this kind of control?  I think we want to believe we do even when we don't. Now with the changes I am facing, I must remember the promises of God that he faithfully delivered in the past.

Jesus talks about the birds and how they trust God for all of their needs. Here inside the fence we have a large community of birds living here; a large community of sparrows and starlings.  They find shelter under the corrugated overhangs of our sidewalks. I'm pretty sure they have learned the English language.  When we are paged over the loud speaker to line up outside on the sidewalk, they gather around the door where we exit the Dirty Spoon Diner and they wait.  They wait for us to leave with our left over bread slices, pancakes, French toast, buns, cake, and tortilla shells.  Many guys will throw their bread out in the grass to feed these birds.  This is a crime in itself here in side the fence but no one seems interested in enforcing the code.  Perhaps they, too, have read Matthew 6.

The sparrows work together on a single slice of bread.  They are very comfortable with us around them but they remain a bit skittish.  They get their beaks full from the bread and move on.  Then the starlings come in and scatter the sparrows to take larger chunks for themselves.  Sometimes they abscond with a whole slice as they work extra hard to gain altitude from the heavy payload.  The occasional crow swoops in takes over the feast from all of them.  Sometimes we are witness to a squawk contest among them.  The big ones always win.

When the weather is nice, I like to sit on one of the benches and take my turn to feed them.  Saltine crackers are a favorite for them.  I break them up and scatter them out before me.  First one appears. Then another. Soon a large group is pecking for the crumbs a few feet away from me.  Some are brave enough to land on the bench and clean up the crumbs there until I make a move for another cracker and they are gone in an instant.  It's a joy to watch them eat.  Whenever I feed them, I think about this passage in the book of Matthew.  “These birds do not sow or reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?”  I love how Jesus uses object lessons that transcend generations of Christians who struggle with worry.

If God cares for the sparrows this much, will he not care for me even more? This is his promise to me; a promise that I have come to experience in the past; a promise that I can count on in the future when I enter the next trail.

It is wonderful to experience God's promises in your life!  This past 7 years I have learned to trust God in big and small ways. Through all of it he has been faithful to me, even when I was failing to trust him like I had promised.  Sometimes I try to navigate my way through these storms on my own without trusting God and I fail miserably.  God gracefully shows me how much he loves me even when I fail in those trials. He shows me time and again that I don't have to struggle so hard. I can trust him with my fears and anxiety when those clouds burst open.  When I finally come to this realization, I have an epiphany experience much like that old commercial for tomato juice. I call these moments my V8 moments.  I could have trusted God! Then I could have prevented my storm of fear and anxiety.

With all the changes and uncertainty that lie ahead, I know that I must be prepared for these storms. One of the things I like to do to help me avert them is to look back at the times God has proven himself faithful in my life.  It is so easy to forget them if we aren’t purposeful to recall them. So when my thoughts start spinning forward to the future, I grab hold of the gear shifter and put those thoughts in reverse by reflecting on the ways God has brought me through the storms in the past.  It has helped me to write about some of these experiences as it forces me to recall the memories and focus on God's faithfulness.  

Please bear with me as I share with you a little bit of my life and how God has been working in it. I am opening the window of transparency as I reflect on God's work in my life and as I begin the journey home, I will have a stormproof umbrella made of trust and promise to protect me in the rain.  I won't promise that it will be exciting or filled with nail-biting suspense. I do guarantee some really, really dry humor and the occasional pun that may misfire from time to time.  Rather, it's mostly my ramblings and musings as I journey through this crucible of life on my way to the Celestial City.

With Thanksgiving for the way God has led and provided in these last 7 years (and beyond),

McFreedom