What I Was Going To Write To Kevin When He Refriended Me-- And He Refriended Me As He Said & I Began To Write This

Kevin:




Just to let you know; as a cousin and fellow Christian, I love and forgive you; and apologize for what I need to apologize. I want you to know that you don't have to feel compelled to refriend me if your heart really is not in it, even if it would seem to be the Christian thing to do. For your sake, I'm just asking you to think about that.



I don't need you to refriend me if you don't want to-- don't you feel guilted into that. If you and others are angry at me, so what? More than anything, I would rather each and all of us be in friendship with G-d even if never are in friendship with each other until the next lifetime, be that "when He returns or calls us home".



It is not easy for me to see how our family has really been over the years, especially in regards to the Gospel:

"I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen."

I think that, more than anything, instead of coming to the One who can bind our wounds; we tried to cover our own wounds and only made our own wounds worse as well as hurt others-- especially "[our] brethren, [our] countrymen according to the flesh".

As I told you:

Whenever I heard Andrew and Julia Fosko Rusnak spoken of-- they were immigrants from Slovakia or Czechoslovakia who married in 1905, had kids, etc.. Never did I know that our family (even if I disagreed with some of the intent of their decisions)-- for example-- came over here to escape persecution after we couldn't assimilate in Slovakia; and many of us weren't just Crypto Jews (although some were, which is where I disagree with the intent: regardless of the meshuga AntiSemitism in the Church, we should've given Jesus a chance in our lives; and if and when our relatives thought that we were joining the traitors, so what?! And many of us were Jews who believed in Jesus; we were just too damned afraid and too damned quiet to emphasize that part) .



Truth is a lot better (even if stranger and more disquieting) than fiction. By the way, I look at Great-Granduncles Andy, Carl, and Joe all the more as heroes for their going over there (Well, Great-Granduncles Carl and Joe were able to; but on the homefront, there was still Anti Semitism and also that "You can't be a Jew for Jesus!" attitude that Great-Granduncle Andy had to deal with every day!).

And as I wrote to you in the last blog entry (and as hard as it can be-- and I've confessed that I continue to struggle with Self-Hating-Jewish thoughts every day, and I'll continue to day-by-day process that I have both more privilege and responsibility than the Polish-Irish-and-whatever-else gentile that I thought that I was):

I intend to be that one or even one of those ones-- and Kevin Fosko, we can be Jews for Jesus. The question for you is what you're going to do: are you going to keep being like the generation who ultimately betrayed the Yehoshua Sh'mu'el Rusnak side of the family, or are you going to not have the inquity visit the next three and four generations-- should there even be such with the way that this world is going?

I also said that "I'm not perfect and I do a lot of imperfect and imperfected things; but, Kevin Fosko, I will speak about our family. I will speak about what happened. I will speak about what I found out."

I should've sometimes taken the higher road on things, but sometimes my attitude had to be (or at least seem) rough and tough on things-- and I love my family, even if some of you all won't ever love me-- let alone love me again, if you did.

Before I keep kvetching and before I utz you, I ask you to think carefully about your decision. And if you decide not to refriend me after all, it's as those two country songs go: "I'm gonna smile..." (and I told you that in another blog entry, too-- and I told other family members as well. Don't think that I'm talking to only you.) and "It's okay to hurt, and it's okay to cry".

And as I said, I think that, more than anything, instead of coming to the One who can bind our wounds; we tried to cover our own wounds and only made our own wounds worse as well as hurt others-- especially "[our] brethren, [our] countrymen according to the flesh".

Can't we just hurt and cry for once-- and come to Jesus and not suffer ourselves or hurt others?