yet i will rejoice

I have never doubted God’s faithfulness more than in the past six months. His goodness, His promises, His purposes, have never seemed further. They have felt laughable—insulting, even—in the face of some of the most severe hurt I have ever experienced. The chiseling doesn’t feel like a masterpiece-in-the-making, it feels like a painful surgery leaving me with a hardened heart and debilitating limp. This wrestling is not beautiful, it is not able to be summarized in a pretty caption I can plaster on social media. It is dark, it is confusing, it has pushed me to my lowest lows and deepest doubts. The silence I have perceived from God has left me in tremendous anger, and enormous fear, with grace nowhere in sight.

If Jesus is who He says He is, and He did what He said He came to do, why am I so blind to hope? If God is as powerful as He claims to be, why can’t He just override my crippling disbelief? I have had to ask for a soft heart from an intensely hard-hearted space. I have had to pray for gospel truth to stop feeling like paper-thin lies the church feeds me to subdue me into being “content in all things,”—for truth to start actually feeling true. It has been no easy thing.

Friends, I share this hard reality in the sole hope that my deepest discouragements will be encouraging for someone. It is okay to feel this way. It is okay to yell at God, it is okay to have prayers that are full of nothing but tears and cursing and questions. It is okay to be actively redeemed and actively disappointed. I believe that when Paul calls us to begin “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” it can look like this. Working out a faith that calls us to trust when it feels impossible, and endure when it feels like it’s already over, often looks like a lot of fear, and a lot of trembling. We walk out on the tightrope that is stretched out over the abyss of our deepest anxieties, extending into the fog, angry that God has called us to this flimsy rope instead of building a robust bridge for us. Maybe some can walk this tightrope with immense grace and poise, but I have been shakily stepping out each day, yelling at God for making this so hard. To quote JS Park,

“I imagine that when Moses split the Red Sea, there were two groups of people. The first group was composed of victorious triumphant warriors […] The second group was composed of doubtful, panicking screamers running full speed through whales and plankton. I’m a Screamer. I’m a cynic. I’m a critic. I’m a Peter, who can make a good start off the boat, but falls in the water when my eyes wander. […] Yet the Warriors and Screamers all made it through.”

Lately, it has been hard for me to say in complete confidence that God has good plans. At my worst (which is the only place I have found myself lately), I do not trust His timing, I do not trust His goodness, I do not trust His sufficiency. I repent and relapse and retry day after day after day.

Yet, with a mustard-seed-sized whisper, I can still proclaim that He is here. I still know, in the depths of my soul, that my future is far better off in His hands than in my own. I can still believe, with the finest shred, with the smallest fiber of belief I have left, that He is enough. The miracle here is not that I have a tiny granule of faith left. It is that this tiny granule is the only amount faith He needs to move a mountain.

I am learning how to say this monumental “yet:”

Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

– Habakkuk 3:17-18

in transit

If I got plopped on a train moving in an unknown (but quite knowable, really) direction the moment I was born, I am finding that my time in this section of the train is ending. I know this railcar well: the well-worn upholstery of free-time that is so dusty and fascinating in the sunlight, the familiar buzz of schoolwork against the tracks, the comforting scent of summer woven into the floorboards. I look at my old seat—the seat that I have wandered towards and away from, but never leaving this particular car. I know I to have to slip through the sliding doors in front of me into a new car soon, to sit in a different seat, to become acquainted with unusual window frames and to be forced to greet unfamiliar passengers next to me. A new space, a new season, of young adulthood, of moving out and getting by and growing up.

The sliding doors glide open, and it is with deep breaths that I walk through them.  Growing up is a quiet process. I’m in between the railcars now, looking back at my old section of the train through the smudged glass, with a growing fear of looking up to see the new scene in front of me. I stare down at my scuffed up shoes for a bit, wondering if there’s any use for them here. The tracks beneath my feet feel a little more bumpy now; this transition feels unsteady.

The new railcar set before me doesn’t seem to end. It’s a little more fluorescent in here. A little more settled, a little more wary, a little more tired. Writing doesn’t come as easily in this space—I look around and notice that writing for the sake of writing is seldom done. It seems, here, that writing is only noble when trying to prove a point, to win an argument, to broadcast success, to make a profit. Still, I am determined to keep scribbling out my frustrations and jotting down my joys. It may be more important now than it ever has been.

Here, dedicating your entire life to a Man who wandered around in Jerusalem’s dust some 2,000 years ago is absurd. Curiosity gets replaced with judgement gets replaced with anger, and I have never been so aware of being an anomaly. Yet, I have seen the gravity of Jesus most tangibly here. I have seen how much better it is to worship Him instead of a salary, a political party, a degree, a niche, an ability, a romance. Hope and security and wisdom from Christ have never been more real to me, and yet I have seen more convincing counterfeits than I can count.

In an energetic mixture of desperation and courage, my hands tighten around the bouquet of flowers I brought with me from the last railcar. I scatter the flowers around the aisles, sticking them in cup holders, propping them against windows, placing them in my hair.  I slide my window open.  There is joy to be found, there is joy to be created, there is light to be let in, here, in this new place.