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My pastor's family (by the way, my pastor is the wisest person I know, and this entire train of thought is due to recent conversations with him. so there's that.) recently welcomed a new addition: a toddler, adopted from China, named Carter. Carter's family has been sharing their stories of finding Carter, bringing him home, and making him part of their family.
I've been following their story with such interest - not only because Carter's cheeks slay me, and his smile actually makes me tear up, and not only because his parents are wonderfully expressive and deeply-thought people and it's a pleasure to read what they write.
But because of parents, and babies, and attachment, and... grace?
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The death of a faith is agonizing. Any attempts to grasp at the practices or tenets that comforted you before are now deeply painful reminders of what's lost: reminders of the person you were. The agony is circular: you reach out in order to alleviate, or make sense of, your pain, but that which you've always known to reach for has become the source of your pain.
I'm really just too tired to examine it too closely, but it's been almost funny, the way that, in the midst of my acknowledging that the faith I'd always carried is now dead, all the myriad ways that talk of God's grace slips in, more than it ever has, or maybe more than I ever realized. grace. grace. grace. grace. grace. grace. it's a constant hum. It's a melody that I, the musician, don't know. They're words that I, the writer, recognize as made of familiar shapes I've been seeing my whole life, but which make no sense to me.
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| from Alethea Allen's blog, http://romansfivefive.blogspot.com/ |
whoa. pump the brakes, kid.
My previous tenets of faith were shaped by disapproval, shame, distance. The face of God, to me, consisted of slight shakes of a head, tightened lips and steps backward at stumbles that I could never talk about with him; it was like I had to keep a distance long enough for him to forget my misdeeds before I came crawling back, because repentance didn't matter, but what did matter was: earn, work, keep, or lose. I've always figured that God had my mother's face - irrational, angry, scary, hurtful, exasperated. But, as it turns out, God has my father's face - the distant one; the one with power; the one who left, leaves, and will leave. The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
so.. grace?
how is it okay that, after battling more than I'll ever express, I rest, and don't work?
I don't know.
How is the loss of a faith different from separation from God, which we're drilled to believe is the ultimate consequence of sin? to some, the actual reality of what hell itself is?
Don't know.
How is it okay that I don't work my ass off, at all times, in all things, to get to the bottom of every single experience, for the sake of finding the good and making the best and sharing a testimony and blessing other people?
Don't know. Don't care.
Right now - maybe ever? - my job isn't to know. Speaking of circular. This truth brings me more comfort than I can gather, and more rage than I can accept.
Because for the first time, what I do know is that it's impossible to be that person. It is impossible. Not because I lack, but because I am finite. I don't know the reasons for my experiences, and, if there are reasons - if my experiences are part of a deliberate plan, I'd rather not know the reasons or the plan, or the one who planned it. Because how cruel. Maybe that'll change; maybe not.
What I do know, for the first time, is that that I can't make anything happen here. I can't work my way out of this image I have of myself - this horrid, shameful, flawed, horrible, filthy, absolutely immeasurably lacking excuse for something. And, though I never knew it, I never could make anything happen; maybe my entire faith journey has consisted of me alternately spinning my wheels and hiding my face when I run off-track. I think maybe it has.
Maybe whatever relationship means, in terms of God.. maybe it all starts with attachment. Maybe it's more influenced by our initial, most primal attachments than I never understood. And maybe attachment means, in terms of God.. maybe the problem is that mine is as cross-wired as any adopted child with a history.
maybe all of my horrid, sticky darkness that cripples me in the face of what I aspire to, but imagine I always fall short of, isn't here because of me.
maybe it's not even real. maybe it's not here at all.
maybe yours isn't, either.
maybe my instinct to linger in this empty space - the only time in my life I've known that God will speak - is right.
maybe I'm past the point of rage. Maybe I'm not. Tomorrow's a whole other day. Who knows what the weather will be.
Whatever it is.. for the first time in my life, I'm in no hurry. My faith consists of knowing, to my bones, that God will speak. I know he will. I don't know why my life has been the way it has; I'll never know; I can't imagine ever being on good terms with God over it, ever; there are so many things I'll never understand about God, and I don't imagine they'll ever be reconciled, like neat rows of numbers in a record book. But I'm here, and God is here, and I'll stay here as long as I have to - not in the pain I've always felt I deserved, or the self-pity that creeps in before you know it, or the fears of banishment by a God I've never known.
That's my faith. Brittle. Determined. Not. Budging.
It's enough.
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