Feel No Fear

All of us know that feeling, when your heart races, you begin to perspire. When you being to speak and your voice cracks.  The feeling of fear.  There are many ways people work to overcome the fear:   taking a few deep breaths, focusing on someone or something that helps you feel safe.

This is the feeling that overcame me when I cross the Jordanian boarder from Israel.  I was there with a Palestinian coworker, his Jordanian wife and their two young girls.  He’d hired a driver to drop us off at the Israeli border and another person to pick us up on the Jordanian side.  

As we went through border security, I was taken aback when my friend’s voice was raised in argument while speaking to the armed Jordanian border guard as they gestured over to me.  I thought to myself  “What were they saying?”  Then my friend shared with me their concern.  The guards thought I was an Israeli spy wanting to take photos in Jordan and send them back to Israel with my rented Israeli phone.  They wanted to keep my cell phone.  My friend demanded that that was ridiculous, stating I was simply an American tourist.  I looked at my friend squarely and told him, it’s okay let them keep it.  I agreed to the demands of the officers to fill out paperwork for the phone so that I could retrieve it when I returned back.  So what was I doing with an Israeli phone as an American.  Somehow, on my way to Israel in the San Francisco airport, I had lost my work phone.  When I arrived in Israel, I rented a mobile phone at the Tel Aviv airport.  

It felt surreal walking away from the border checkpoint to load my few possessions into the truck that my friend had hired.  For myself, I had only a small satchel with the most basic of supplies. like toothpaste, clean underwear and the small Bible I’d blessed in the Church of the Holy Seplecure during my last trip to Israel.   Inside the Bible was a small crouched cross bookmark my Grandmother had made.  My friend’s family had much more to load since they were traveling with small children.  We drove  across the desert until we arrived at a small town where his wife had grown up and her family still lived.

It was on that long drive that a line from  my grandmother’s favorite psalm came into my mind.  Psalm 23 “yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me”.  I was at peace with the knowledge that if I died, I knew I would go to be with Jesus.  I was flooded with the perfect peace and love of Christ.

We arrived to a delicious middle eastern chicken and rice dish prepared by their mother for us. When accommodations for or the evening were made, I learned I would be sleeping with my friend’s mother.  Everything was new and strange.  I did my best to be polite, interested and pleasant despite not being  able to speak or understand Arabic.  The next day, dressed in western clothing, and walked to the center of the small town to pull money from the ATM.  All eyes in the predominantly Muslim town were upon us.  Christian women in the community typically did not leave their homes without an escort.  Unlike their Muslim neighbors Christians in the area dressed in western clothing.

I hadn’t known what to expect when I agreed to take the trip with my friend.  I certainly hadn’t imagined that I would be sleeping with his mother-in-law who didn’t speak English.  The  trip was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. Ever since my Grandmother had visited the Holy Land and shared with me her delight at visiting Petra, I had become intrigued with it.   There had been something about the tone of her voice when she spoke about it.  She had been one of the first western visitors that had seen it in the early 80s.  She shared about Bible prophesy detailing that the Jewish people would go there for safety during the end times.  She would share these stories while proudly passing around the photo of her seated on top of a camel.  Mind you this is someone who wouldn’t have anything to do with a horse.

After visiting Israel for work just a month or so earlier, I’d bumped into my friend, a coworker of mine, in downtown Santa Cruz, California.    He asked me about my recent trip to Israel for work; it was then that I shared with him my hopes to visit Jordan someday.

To my surprise, he immediately invited me to join him and his family on their family vacation to Jordan. They’d tacked it on to an upcoming business trip to Israel we both were taking.  Even more surprising to me was that my husband, quickly agreed with the idea of me going.   I felt as though the trip was “meant to be”.

After about a day of visiting with his family, we headed to Petra

Were we spent one glorious day in Petra. We all walked through the narrow canyon entrance protecting the city carved into the sides of the canyon walls.  The girls became tired quickly.  I took the opportunity to have my photo taken on top of a camel there in most famous treasury building.  We hired donkeys to carry usto the top of the canyon walls.  There in the cravace of the canyon I sat with beduwans cross legged on the ground sharing lunch.  At the end of the day, I carefully chose blown glass drinking glasses to take home as a souvenir to remember my trip.

After a day in Petra, we returned to my friend’s home spent another day then my friend drove me back to the Jordanian / Israeli border and dropped me off to return back to Tel Aviv on my own.   After my initial experience entering into Jordan, I didn’t know what to expect returning to Israel.  Once again the border guards spoke Arabic so I was not able to understand them.  They went through the few possessions  that I had with me and gestured as if they were going to hurl the lovely hand blown glassware to the ground.  I took some deep breaths and remembered that Christ was with me. I gave them the paperwork for the cellphone I had left behind and waited.  I drew a big sigh of relief when they returned with the phone and handed the beautiful glassware back to me.  I was back in Israel, I was relieved.