Tabea Oppliger #nofilter
www.fontis-verlag.com
Dedicated to Tabea Legler, the first woman who was not afraid of my strength ‌ and to every single person who is reading this.
Tabea Oppliger
#nofilter Pioneering the Dream Raw, Real & Relatable
2019 by Fontis-Verlag, Basel Cover: RenĂ˜ Graf Cover Photo: by Tabea Oppliger Interior Photography: Tim Carr, Bosa Feurer, Saskia Koch, Stefan Mikolon, Oppliger Family, Leon Seierlein Paintings: by Tabea Oppliger Typesetting: InnoSet AG, Justin Messmer, Basel Printed in the Czech Republic by Finidr ISBN 978-3-03848-186-7
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Contents
1. #aninvitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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2. #befoundinyourlane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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3. #doyoufeelsafe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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4. #massagebytabea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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5. #obedienceisgodslovelanguage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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6. #israel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7. #trainthemdonttamethem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8. #partnerincrime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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9. #morethanjustabag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10. #relationshipversusreligion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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11. #artbytabea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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#gratitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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# 2
#befoundinyourlane I’m sure you’ve all watched Olympic track. Every athlete is assigned a lane to compete in and stay in. Not one of them would think of crossing over to another one or they would be disqualified. We all have a designated lane in life to run and persevere in. It’s up to us to be found faithfully in it. I don’t know about you but I like to know and identify with the main character in a story or movie or play. While this book really isn’t about me, but rather about what God can accomplish through you when you are willing to go and do what no one has done before, allow me to properly introduce myself. I’m an every day girl, doing every day things, daring to attempt something big enough that failure is guaranteed unless God steps in. (Bruce H. Wilkinson in The Prayer of Jabez) Yes, I believe, I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and His miracles, but please don’t let this make you put
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this book away. This is not an attempt to preach to you or to bible-bash you. You don’t have to share my opinion to get that I couldn’t do what I do without my faith. Just hear me out and let my life and love for people be the message. Born as the 6th and last child to my Swiss parents, I was raised in Papua New Guinea, an island in the Pacific, just above Australia. My parents pioneered a very influential social and Christian faith-based movement over there for more than 40 years. I grew up in a third world country for the first 16 years of my life which gives me the legitimate title of a so called Third Culture Kid. So I guess my childhood alone would fill a book, but that’s not my intention here. You’ll find out bits and pieces here that obviously shaped me and made me a lot of who I am today. As I began to mentally prepare to write this book, I asked some of my closest friends to tell me what the first thing was that popped into their mind when they thought of me. It could be a noun, a verb, an adjective, just anything that they thought was me. These stood out to me the most: &
Fierce adventurer
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Loving doer Astounding obedience
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Bold faith
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Risk taker
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Strong yet sensitive
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This may sound like I’ve just always happened to be this person. She sounds pretty intimidating. It says that she’s got it all together. Like I can’t even live up to her. And isn’t that so often what we allow ourselves to think when we start looking around instead of focusing in on who we are and what you and I individually have to bring to the table? I hope this book will help you find that unique gift. I wrote it with you in mind and pray you can relate to my story. Words have power and we need to remind ourselves of that every single day. The way my friends saw me is what they called out in me and in essence drew out of me. Speaking these qualities out loud means declaring their actual existence in our lives. Living from there and pressing play, not rewind is a choice we have to make daily. I currently live in Israel. When we moved here five years ago we embarked firstly on a mission to learn Hebrew and in doing so, gain a better understanding of the culture. I remember sitting in those classes completely overwhelmed with an absolutely different language. One I could not relate to on a logical study level, which was frustrating to say the least because I speak numerous other tongues, however I was connecting to it on a spiritual level, grasping an extended understanding of God and the way He thinks. As you already know, I believe in God and His Word. My life is built on the values of the Bible. Rather than religion, I
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live out a relationship with Him. When God first created man, He created us in His image to have a relationship with us. He spoke the world into existence. His words created things and called them into life. Most Hebrew words are derived from a three letter root. So in the Hebrew language, to further understand a word and add insight to it we need to examine the root. Now the word for “speak” in Hebrew is “ledaber” and the word for “thing” is “davar” both words deriving from the same three letter root “Dalet, Bet, Reysh”. In other words when you start speaking, you are naming something and calling it to appear in your life. Another powerful thing I learned sitting in those classes at Tel Aviv University was the fact that Hebrew does not have a verb for “to have”. Which basically means we don’t possess anything. Instead of “I have” they say, “There is to me” (yesh li – yl Xy) or for “I don’t have” they say, “There isn’t to me” (en li – yl !ya). So to put it into context you would say, “There is to me – as in given to me – time.” Or the opposite, “There isn’t given to me time.” Which to me puts my entire life into perspective! It is either given to me or it is not given to me. It takes me to doing things from a place of rest rather than from a place of striving. I don’t own anything in that sense. What I have is a gift entrusted to me and it is here to serve the world. Not myself. So, remember I said in my first fun facts that I used to be extremely shy especially when it came to speaking up? For fear of doing something wrong or asking a question
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that would make me look stupid I kept quiet most of the time. This simply means I was not rooted in my identity. Why? I could blame my upbringing; a very strict home where rules and regulations came before relationship. I did not know my mother and father as friends but rather as firm teachers. Don’t get me wrong, they loved us six children very dearly, but they could not always express it in ways that truly reached my heart. (We have a beautiful relationship now and they are my biggest fans!) This left me with a sense of insecurity. It made me feel like I was not good enough unless I performed perfectly. My Dad was a genius and there was absolutely nothing he couldn’t do or build or fix or manage. Plus, he couldn’t just do it, he did it perfectly. And I mean that. It’s not just a kid bragging on their dad’s super hero abilities. The fact that I was forced to grow up fast, beyond my years, being separated from my parents to attend boarding school hundreds of miles away from them at the age of 11 may have well nurtured independence, but it also brought about a lot of self-doubt. But we are not what circumstances made us to be. We are who God made us to be. When I was four years old our house caught fire in Wewak, Papua New Guinea and literally burnt to the ground. To this day we do not know for sure how it happened or what triggered it. (My father however believes someone deliberately
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set fire to the room downstairs which functioned as a mini warehouse for all the Bibles and Christian literature and resources.) Our family was scheduled to leave the country within the next few days. Flights were booked to Switzerland and many suitcases already packed. And then this devastating fire shortly before. I can still see us standing there in the dark, all huddled together on a Saturday evening, watching in dumbfounded awe as our beloved home with all our belongings crumbled. My older sister was crying about her braces, my brother was frustrated he had picked up an empty suitcase instead of one that was already packed and my other sister was bewailing the loss of her favorite blankie. We lost everything materialistically speaking. But we didn’t lose what my father and mother had been building up over the years. For they were not building an empire of materialistic goods, they were building something lasting with people for people. The support of those around us was immense and we were immediately extended a place to sleep as families opened their homes and showered us with love and goods! Within hours it felt like we had more in toys generously donated to us from everyone (including a boy, who would later become my husband! ‌ wait for that story ‌ in another chapter) than before! Our passports had pretty much burned up too but we managed to be convincing enough leaving Papua New Gui-
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nea a few days later as we headed to Switzerland via Hongkong. Little did we know that the border control in Hongkong would not accept our ashy burned and illegible passports and cause us hours of waiting and feeling like criminals. My poor parents. Us kids had no idea what they were going through. All we knew is, as long as we were together and with our parents, we were safe. We belonged. Plus, we were having fun and laughing our heads off as we sat in a small cold bare room leaning against glass windows down to the floor and listened to the bustling travellers walk past pulling their trolleys across the uneven terminal floor sounding like hundreds of little farts going off. It still rings in my ear, the “farting” and our giggling. I can’t remember how long they kept us there, but take note that we’re in the very early 80’s here where communication between embassies and authorities was a slow process of complicated telefaxing back and forth. (For all you millennials, google will tell you what telefaxing means). The moral of the story? Our passports may have burned, deleting our proven identification on a legal document, but the fire could not burn our identity, our original design that God so lovingly wove into every fibre of our spiritual DNA. Things can happen to us in our childhood that leave us deeply wounded and scarred or some dreams burn to the ground. But it cannot strip us from who we were made to be in our original design.
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God specializes in redemption and He will do everything to get us back on track with who He created us to be so we can be His hands and feet and purposefully execute His plan on earth. He really wants you as a friend, to partner with Him in bringing heaven to earth. And he will often restore us and bring us back around in ways that we don’t even realise He’s working on our behalf. All it takes is our surrender to want to be made whole and to choose it. The lack of a close relationship with my mother and father left me with a few cracks in my early adulthood. I craved to be seen and recognized for how I performed. I had a hard “you-better-get-over-it” attitude towards other people who appeared needy in my eyes and I desperately tried to fit in so I would belong somewhere. Moving back to Switzerland from a third world country at the age of 16 was intense. I certainly didn’t belong and couldn’t identify with the Swiss culture, that seemed to say that conformity would get you where you needed to go. As I mentioned before, God is in the restoration business and He wants you where He knows you’ll be shining at your best. God had his eye on me as He made sure my paths would cross with an incredible woman I admire and love for her empowering voice in this world. At a conference, speaking to thousands of people, this beautiful lady took the time to respond to my boldly approaching her and spoke words of life into my barren soul without truly
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knowing me or realizing what an impact her act of love would have. I remember her words as if it were yesterday, “I don’t know you, but my spirit knows you.” It was such a powerful statement of affirming my identity and changed me forever. We have had a close mother-daughter relationship since. I am indebted to people like her, who despite their busy schedules and limited time, keep their spirits sharp to respond to the God of the universe who has put them in an influential position such as theirs; where while they get to impact thousands with their speaking, they see and connect to the one. I’m not the exception when it comes to receiving soul healing so I can go ahead and do all I am created to do. You are the apple of God’s eye too. He lives to see you thrive and live out your purpose and joins you with the right people at the right time! Marianne Williamson says it so well: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant
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to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. How powerful is that!? As you gloriously live out your gifts and talents, you invite others to do the same. As you are totally yourself, you liberate others. Your presence will create a safe space for others to do the same. As we all run in our lanes, heaven is cheering us on. So this is me, in my lane, sharing a bit more of my story and I’m delighted you’re running alongside me in your lane.
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