Some things knock the wind out of us, pillage our pride, jump all over our post toasties, and challenge our faith.
Usually, we get back up – most often with considerable help and prayer and humility – and we become reacquainted with the community of the once-lost.
Sometimes the situation is so severe that we are smashed upon the floor with life bits broken around us and a hope so concussed that we know we are forever altered.
Not everyone recovers. Pain so severe, betrayal so deep and constant, lies woven so tightly that even the sun is dimmed – these seasons through the valley in the shadow of death come and the way seems lost.
It has come. And I almost didn't make it out of this season alive; faith and hope and love were almost lost to me.
The sheltering shock began to wear and the rawness returned and though I know I am whole-once-again and that shame has been kicked to the curb, over these long long months, I almost gave up.
You see, I now have no answers, no warm and fluffy hope, no job here in Manhattan, and no trite saying or meme to post on my fridge door.
I have whispers and assumptions.
Thank God that I have friends and family and the truth of the matter.
I have forgiveness to extend though I have to chase that dog down daily. And today I realized that if I am going to have any faith, I am going to have to fight for it.
"What?' you may wonder. A committed missionary crawling back towards faith as if it were the undead; skewered and torn asunder, but still animated.
My feelings, my journals, a long return "home" have all declared that faith is a sham at best – a carrot dangling from a stick at worst.
I know the verses. I scratch at them and search for them like a rare and precious treasure…the water of life.
And yet, each night when crawling into bed, I am keenly aware that "this is not how it was supposed to be." When morning finds me suddenly aware of my surroundings, there is a Grand Canyon of dissonant thoughts to hurtle myself across.
Have you been here before?
Are you here now?
I am the only one?
Join with me. We may not sing merry songs or speak with absolute certainty, but we will live with candor and tears and warm ourselves with good company and the fight.
We will warm ourselves with the fight for our faith.
We will warm ourselves with the fight for our faith until we no longer stand
in our own strength, but rest in the strength of the Lord of Heaven and small things.
We will call out grace and hope and peace and war to one another as the enemy of our souls demands despair in loud voice and the salvation of our souls whispers ever so quietly, "Peace. Be still."
We will fall.
We will certainly wipe out.
If we do this warring for faith together – we will not succumb to the lie that there is only one way to go and that is down in utter defeat.
But even if we do fail to rise in our utter defeat – if we are together shoulder-to-shoulder when no more tears will come – we will not stay down.
We will remember that "in good company we can be brave" and that this fight is worth every moment crawling out of the morgue and back into life.
* * *
(This is where I wanted to put a clip of Monty Python's Black Knight as he declares that his mortal injuries are only "flesh wounds." But the language is saltier than even I can post. So imagine me yelling across the miles to you, "It's only a flesh wound!")
