Does it feel like everyone is one stare, one shove, one slight away from a breakdown and/or a lashing out? I feel it on the train. I feel it on the streets. I feel that I’m one of the said folks. We’re in the middle of a pandemic that feels like a false tail end of living our best lives and feels like the shoe will drop any minute now which is why we’re living our best lives. Also best lives? Right alongside all this: Climate change. Afghanistan. Banning reproductive rights. Evictions.
So it feels like champagne problems to say I feel lost and gray and restless. I have so much. I’m alive. I have folks who love me. I have a laptop that allows me to blog this post. But can I just have this moment, like the private good cry I had while watching 30 Rock yesterday during the middle of the day?
I wish I could do the thing I love most.
I wish I felt like all the moments till now are just prepping me for something big that’s about to happen.
I wish I didn’t doubt this calling I keep reassuring myself with.
I wish I would just be grateful and happy that I can crash at my parents’ house instead of feeling like I’m trapped.
I wish I had a place I could call home and buy my own plant.
I wish I knew things will work out, whatever that means. I think it feels like a big OH and WOAH and I SEE, NOW!
I wish I felt more seen.
I wish I didn’t think Christians who throw around — “I have the joy of the Lord,” “I will pray for you,” “The Spirit is carrying me through,” and the rest of those phrases that only seem “real” when you’re at the center of that kind of faith-led blessing — were just faking it and unable to meet me in my emotional gray cave.
I wish I really did trust in being present in the moment.
I wish I knew what my next step needs to be.
Because of all deep well of wishes and desires I feel sad and angry and scared.
Yet somehow in my gray and in my self-pity, I happen to still feel God’s presence. When I allow for the anxiety and control to pause, I feel God’s kind love for me. I get a surge of hope that miracles happen. I remember again that the gospel is it, and if I can show God’s love, then today, this moment is a victory.
Faith and God are my most vulnerable spaces because here is where I hold my most doubts and my biggest hope. With God is where I feel most alive and drives me to live my life bravely. With God I feel the most angry and upset that I am not getting my way! (I’m sure it’s for the best….right?) I write this because I need to remind myself it is okay that I still love God even if I don’t look it on the outside or post scripture in my social media. I need God. I am a desperate skeptical human being, and only by the grace of God am I still here. I may not have a physical home I can safely and proudly call mine. I may not have a career that I can proudly and excitedly exclaim. But I have a home in God that I keep coming back to, and for that I am grateful.
radical honesty
Be a Witness of Hope
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’ Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter. ‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ He went away a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.’ When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!’
Matthew 26:36-46
The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
Susan Sontag
Jesus’ time at Gethsemane might be ‘the calm before the storm,’ the ‘storm’ being his torture & execution. While I think what is to come is horrible, this moment before is equally scary, maybe even more devastating. In this moment, Jesus is at the edge of a cliff, knowing he needs to jump but cannot even see the bottom. Jesus feels the depth of sorrow. Jesus feels the loneliness with his friends asleep. This task is for uniquely for him, and only he can fulfill it.
The gap between knowing what needs to be done and doing the thing reveals our fears and our faith. How do we get from our ego to a kind of living that thinks beyond ourselves which incorporates God’s will? How do we arrive at a place where our will aligns with God’s will, not out of obligation, but out of love and purpose? How can we act from a place of surrender & sorrow? How can we act from a place of service when what we witness breaks our hearts? How can we become witnesses of surrender & a will greater than ourselves?
Bring your defeats, your doubts and fears to God. Be radically honest. I pray God honors your honesty with radical trust. Live out of that radical trust that you have a great purpose. When you can sense and see the sorrow of this world, yet choose to go on, you are a witness of hope.
Are you there God? 