There’s a familiarity you feel when you walk into your home after a long day. There’s a certain look you see in a friend’s face when you run into him or her in a store, or at a restaurant, or somewhere you wouldn’t anticipate being recognized.
That look, that ‘knowing’ is strangely comforting. It reminds you that you’re remembered, that there’s a history you can fall back on with that other – and it sustains you and reassures.
Why do we need that? Why do we struggle for it? Is that why we reach to God?
That need to be known, I think, plays a part in grief too. One who knew you is no longer – or not for now anyway. And that’s why it feels like part of you dies with them, because they knew you. Really knew.
God says He knows us. I don’t think I really believed that, or at least ‘known’ that, until recently. And harder to believe is that He knows us better than we know ourselves.
I was wrestling Jake yesterday. Standing up, I flipped him over onto my back while holding him by his ankles, so that his back rested against mine but upside down. In a flash he was scared and wanted down.
It was an awkward position so it took me some maneuvering to get him turned around and facing me again, still in my arms. He was kicking and grabbing whatever he could – which turned out to be mostly my hair and ears, and at one time my nose – which I didn’t particularly enjoy.
During the transition I said to Jake calmly (trying to get him to regain his calm), “Jake, don’t struggle. You’re just making it more difficult.”
As the words came out, I felt them sting in my chest. Or maybe it was Jake actually pulling on my chest hair. Either way, it stung and I got the message.
Life was pretty easy for me until all this happened. One day while my parents were visiting, my mom said something that stuck with me. “Chad, you don’t get to coast anymore. You’re going to do life hard.”
That stung too, but I knew it was true.
So I have a choice and, I guess, you do too. We weren’t promised easy. We were promised abundant. Somewhere in between is the marrow of life. I’ve been struggling with God, donning myself in a modern day Jacob costume.
But the truth is, unlike Jacob, there’s no angel present. When the bell started the match, God was not in the opposing corner. I’ve been fooling myself, delusional and wrestling no one but myself. God isn’t interested in wrestling. The whole time I thought I felt God’s arms trying to wrangle me to the ground, He was really trying to hold me closer, all the while saying, “Chad, why are you struggling? You’re just making it difficult on yourself.”
Life is difficult enough without adding my dose of self-pity or anger toward God in the mix. So how do I reconcile with what’s happened with all the scripture that promises God’s protection for a life lived submitted to Him, or the infamous ‘abundant life’ bit?
I don’t.
If you look at what the word “reconcile” means, you find this:
1. to cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired 2. to settle (a quarrel, dispute, etc.)
3. to bring into agreement or harmony
I won’t ever be able to ‘accept’ what’s happened and bring it to a point of harmony in my life. And I can’t reconcile, or settle, a quarrel if the other person isn’t arguing with me.
That leaves me one choice. I have to live with the pain of what’s happened -never forgetting it – and let that pain drive me toward God, not away. If I really believe what I’ve purported to be all my life, than this is the time to prove it. Not for you. Not for me even. But for Faith itself, because Faith believes even when it can’t see – so many ditch it altogether.
I can’t see how I’m supposed to live out the rest of my life full of joy and contentment. I don’t see how this is bringing me to the best version of myself.
But I don’t have to, because Faith does.