Our vision... once through the shredder

08 May 2022

Our vision… once through the shredder

from Benjamin Funk

I screamed at the steering wheel, my fingernails dug into the leather. I’d had enough, the barrel had overflowed, my patience had snapped.

Before that, I had left the house in a rage. Have I ever had a moment like that in my life? I can’t remember it. Frustration had got the better of me, I had simply exploded.

In August 2020, I wrote an article about settling in and organizing our lives in Israel. About the hurdles and difficulties that I/we had to overcome. Alexandra and I found our lifestyle and developed a shared vision. We had started a small guest and tour business a few years ago. In a nutshell, we were able to put together unique total packages. It was more than just work. It was our vision to show our guests Israel personally and up close. Over the years, many great people sat at our table, many of them became friends and came almost every year. We didn’t mind being up very early, preparing everything and practicing hospitality. A long day of touring with guests never felt like work. I loved showing our visitors extraordinary places. Back then, I put it like this: “I have one of the coolest jobs in the world! I visit the most beautiful places in Israel every week. I drive a car, I walk several kilometers a day, I get to share my enthusiasm for the places with people. I get to know them and love learning more about them.”

” In 2020, we still had plans: “Shouldn’t we expand?” Guest traffic was now really taking off.”

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine, but it was a very fulfilling time for us. I also taught user design and user experience online and had a few projects on the go that fitted in well between tours and our working environment.

In 2020, we still had plans: “Shouldn’t we expand?” The guest business was now really taking off. We had looked at a new location with small houses. A colorful and well-filled year lay ahead of us: outdoor tours, bus tours, exclusive tours, men’s tours and much more.

Then came the pandemic.

Everything turned out differently. At first, we were full of confidence that the spook could be over after a few weeks. But weeks turned into months and ultimately years. So we had to give up our job and ultimately our vision. Instead of a good year in 2020 with some time off in Germany in the summer, we found ourselves in a situation that threatened our very existence.

God has been faithful all this time and provided for us through kind people, enough other work and through the state. Small and big miracles.

But the hole was there….

It felt as if someone had ripped something out of our lives. Our vision, for which we had invested a lot of passion, time and energy, had shattered into thousands of pieces like a glass bowl on a floor. For the first year, I followed the media closely to see when things might continue. Instead of opening dates, there were always delays. With time and loss, we realized how our vision had welded us together all these years and brought us to life. I found myself back at the PC eight, nine, ten hours a day. The great desire to reduce screen time to a minimum was a thing of the past.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no aversion to PC work, but I’ve been working behind the screen since I was eighteen, and I wanted and still want the change, at least a mix.

Life had already been shaken up enough when our landlords at the time announced that they wanted to move out. So we embarked on an arduous search for a new home in the middle of the peak season of the pandemic and found a great new place. Here we still have space for our family, animals, fruit and vegetables. We live in a great neighborhood with a lot of peace and quiet, but at the same time it was clear that the time with guests directly in the house would be over. (There are solutions in the village for guests)

Let’s get back to the car in late summer 21.

Now I was sitting there. I grumbled and was also angry with God. There was no end to the pandemic in sight. The initial stopgap solution of “PC work” had become our main source of income, which was draining me and my fire had died down to a smouldering wick.

There have been many good letters over the years that have repeatedly encouraged us to wait and see. But the more time that passed, the more often we talked about the past on long walks, we realized that even after the pandemic ended quickly, you can’t just start again as if nothing had happened.

The time has come

Behind the wheel of our small car, I realized that I finally had to let go, because I was living in the past and looking back. For the first time, I admitted to myself the deep pain and anger I felt. In the face of the pandemic, I recognized my helplessness and powerlessness. The harder I resisted the frustration and refused to accept that I couldn’t change it, the more I broke down inside. And at my lowest point, all I wanted to do was leave Israel with my family. How good that God can bear the anger and frustration that he listened to that evening.

Pain and grief take time. There is a shortcut or an express train out of a crisis. When I talk about my adventures in Israel, my eyes light up . When Alex and I rave about the good times we’ve had with our many guests, our hearts open up but, and it will stay that way, a little melancholy resonates.

“What will happen next?” we are asked every week. We wait and pray. There is no other answer yet. In any case, what we are currently doing is producing films and videos in and about Israel, we write articles for magazines and books, we meet with many people, we are guests at Israel evenings and travel groups, we help plan tours and trips to Israel …. (Further ideas are welcome).

In the car that evening, on the ruins of our vision, a seed of renewal fell that is now germinating. We don’t know what will happen. We trust in God that something new will grow from it and that a fire will be kindled in our hearts and eyes.

In a serious crisis many years ago, I wrote in my diary: “Where one path ends, a new stony path often begins and it is worth walking it.”