“Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie”. Jordan Peterson
When I asked God to remove anything that might be getting in the way of hearing him speak to me, He gutted me. There was dishonesty that I didn’t even know existed. Unlike the loss you experience of a loved one from cancer that comes in the night, I orchestrated the disease that led me to lose the one I loved. As men, it is easy to run and seek comfort in a million other people, places, or things. But nothing would satisfy this loss. I lied. I sinned. I broke promises. I ruined something amazing for myself, but even worse, for many other people who truly loved me. The dreams and hopes that died for me? They died for the other side too, but because of me. How do you go on after that? How do you carry that shame and guilt? No apology seems to do. The only thing that I understand to do is to let God complete his work in me and have faith that he will use it to heal all of us. There is no antidote. No rewind. There is only God in the end. And therefore, there is only God in a new beginning.
I have to pray alone and tell God what I think every day and ask him to verify it just to know I am seeking and speaking the truth. Some things I hear or see back shock me. Some things don’t. Some things, like when he finally answered my “why” hurt, because he was right. And the truth, when initially avoided, can be very painful. All of the apologies in the world won’t undo an ounce of the pain of a lie. Don’t be like me, don’t let dishonesty creep up this late in life. It is gross. And it is not who you, or I, am in the slightest. We are the honest representation of God. So, the only way forward is an honest representation of him. With honesty comes the opportunity of repetance. With repentance comes grace. With grace comes freedom. But the pain of your lies lasts forever.
There was rumor once, of a place in me that grew, the most beautiful of lush green gardens. Rich was the soil, dark and moist, from which sprung life: foliage of all the colors bright and plain. Rumors told, too, that God wandered there; His own Son even prayed, knees upon that very soil, moist then from the sweat of his brow, from which sprouted more life so pure. Trees reaching, stretching their outermost fingertips to the skies in worship. Every ray of sun bleeding through to the pathways of unworn grass, untouched by weed or pest. There was rumor that garden, beautiful and green, was painted on my soul. What’s more, the rumors were true, whispered among the angels who watched me grow, that the garden was me, every tangled limb and reaching leaf the pieces of my being. My heartbeat vibrating softly through the vines and across the forrest floor. Living. Breathing. Known.
Did you hear the rumor then? That the trees did scream, too. Their pain was heard not by man or dog, but by ears eternal. The garden grew, but was not maintained. Weeds were gathered and planted about. Their thorns and vines striking through the soil, seeping up it’s moisture, strangling every flower that bloomed. Suffocating new life. The trees looked on in terror. Protectors of this forest floor, shade to the garden that was my soul. Rumor has it, it started with a spark. Not divine, but intended for evil. That spark grew, and drew upon itself every ounce of air til flames erupting, jumped about. That fire burned, hot and high, devouring every ounce of deadwood that fell, consuming vine and weed, branch and limb. Rumors spread, that the pain was savage, that even the trees did scream, too. Until after rain, and setting sun, and morning new: remained the life, once smothered by every weed and rotting log peaking through.
There is a rumor now, that God recognizes every plant that remains upon this garden floor. His watchful eye and strong right hand moving burned deadwood away. It is no rumor, that garden grows beautiful again today.
I wish I could go back and tell myself a few things, the same things I would tell anyone younger than me. There is no avoiding pain and chaos; those are the tools that use your ingredients to formulate your future. But there is self-inflicted pain that is more than anyone should have to experience. I would tell anyone, God made you uniquely in his image and then remained. He didn’t walk away from a finished product, but you are a finished product. Will you evolve? Yes. But are you uniquely everything wonderful that you need to already be? Yes. He is with us because he is written into our image and our being. God is a creator. He sees a blank canvas and he longs to paint a beautiful picture. You are that picture before you were even born. You do not have to earn that image. You do not have to find that image. You are not meant to edit that image, to add to it, or subtract. You are that image now and will remain so forever. Step back from the painting that is you, and see yourself as God does. Never wander from that image that you are because that is where pain lies- in the oils and paints of humanity. Be true. Be loved. And accept yourself for everything you truly are while you refuse to believe the lies.
“Before you were formed in the womb I knew you” Jeremiah 1:5
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. –Ranier Maria Rilke, Go to the Limits of Your Longing
When I began my grief, all I wanted were answers to the why’s. Why did I make any mistakes? Why wouldn’t she listen to me? Why wouldn’t she want to work through this and save what we vowed to uphold, for better or worse? Why this pain? Why is God silent? Why can I not seem to move forward? WHY? As my grief evolved, so did my relationship with God. I still don’t know the answers to any of those questions. But I have so many other answers he found necessary to reinstate my identity and to see myself as the man that I am. I carry great pain, loss, and sadness. And I struggle with shame that gets in the way of progress at times. But those are the forming scars; proof that it was real. And God’s voice is proof that he is real.
If there is one area I did not fail myself, it was that I directed all of my anger and passion onto Him. I ignored my conditioning to believe that I could only come to him in reverence and I swung everything I had to challenge his realness. It turns out, what I was challenging was myself and he was there to answer. Whether I was cursing him or praising him, he was there. My questions evolved, and so did his answers. There was no silver bullet and no silver lining. Only a God willing to share in the suffering and pull me to safety.
The day my life fell apart I sat prepared in a bed of suicide. I cursed God saying, how many people have called out to you for help before they pulled the trigger, and you were silent? Suddenly, a startling knock on the door. Dogs barking. Who saved me then? I continued to spiral in pain. Calling out loud for help while simultaneously accusing him of absent fatherhood. A form of bargaining and manipulation aimed at forcing him into instant repair of the life I once had. But the chaos that was surrounding me was because the life I once had wasn’t the life he wanted for me.
Do not misconstrue my words- it wasn’t God’s plan to upend my life. He didn’t want my person to turn their back on me and walk away. He didn’t want a covenant to be ruined. No more than he wanted me to make my own poor choices. He had chains to break in me that could be freed no other way. He doesn’t make your partners choices for them, just like he doesn’t make yours- he is there to heal your marriage but not force someone else to participate. And ultimately, he is there to heal you even when you lose everything you love or hoped for. Sometimes, in my screaming and crying and constant questioning, the only thing I would hear from him was, “keep showing up”. I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t, really. But if you keep showing up, you’ll find he is always there waiting. Not in silence. Not observing you and teaching you a lesson through his absence. He is there. Present and already at work.
God wanted me to see myself how he saw me. To start with self honesty. To know I am a good husband, a good father, a good son, a good brother, and an amazing human being. It’s hard to say those things. But it was easy for him to tell me- over and over again.
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me. – Galatians 2:20
The word innocent; it burns my own tongue and lips to utter and sits like a hot knife in the back of my mind. I am not innocent. I know, with all of my heart, that I am a good man. But innocent? No, I lost that long ago- or so, I thought. I have carried by guilt and shame like war trophies around my neck, felt the wrath of human judgement that burns like the fury of hell, and condemned myself to a place of suffering deserved by those who dare to violate the foundation of their moral values. This feels just. It feels deserved. Righteous punishment.
It is not surprising, then, that hearing God speak to me that I am innocent before him is painful, if anything, and impossible to comprehend. The idea that, perhaps, I never lost my innocence. Indeed, it could be so, as I was born into sin, that I never started at a place of innocence in the first place. I wasn’t born with it, I didn’t earn it, I’ve lost it many times: redemption. As I wrestle with my loss, a great loss due to my own confusing choices, I feel nothing but guilt and shame. Therefore, I wrestle too, with the idea of redeemable innocence. The idea that God redeemed me, that he only sees the real me and not the version of me that operated in falsehood, and upon that redemption is my innocence. I am not inherently innocent, but it is by his redemption that I am free of guilt. That does sound lovely. There is nothing more difficult to make sense of than this concept when you are suffering the loss of your own sin: actions, for which, you are guilty.
The only way that I might even begin to partially understand this concept of true unconditional love is to step outside the human constraints of time. We see each other from moment to moment. Always looking for confirmation that the person we are most vulnerable to is not who we thought they might be. Easily erasing the true heart and good of a man by summing him up by his mistakes and poor choices. After all, we must protect ourselves first, right? If they could do this now, they could do this 20 years from now. I thought they were good, but they proved me wrong.
The idea of unconditional love is a reflection of God’s love. He loves who we truly are. That is to say, that he loves the unique person and identity you were born with, delineating between the person who acted in sin and the person that truly exists. He is just to redirect us and remind us of who we are, but he does not recognize us as our sin. He cannot look upon sin, he only sees who we truly are. That is why we say, God never gives up on us. He cannot. This means, we are not only forgiven, we are not only free of guilt and shame, we are innocent. We seem incapable of doing just that for the people we love even the most. And we seem incapable of doing that for ourselves.
Grief is a game of loss in life. The steaks are literally life or death. So we have to search for the sparks of hope that are whispered between the screams of our tortured souls. One of those whispers that longs to be heard is: That is not how I see you. I see the real you. Redemption is yours and you are innocent not because you paid the price of suffering, but because I already did.
What’s the most annoying trope in books or movies?
Slow motion walk, flat affect, dirt and blood across the face: boom. Fire, car rises slowly into the air, bodies fly backwards arms toward the sky. The hero never turns. Never even winces.
It is human nature to turn toward the explosion. To watch the flames. To feel the fear of life’s sudden change. Frantically work to gather the injured. Desperate attempts to tame the flames. But to no avail. Life is forever deformed by the blast. And walking away, unscathed, eyes forward, with confidence is either madness or the movies.
Knowing your true identity is our only fail proof navigation system in life. It is not about “finding yourself”. It’s about being honest with God and asking Him to know yourself, as He knows you.
The loss that brings your greatest grief strips you naked. It reveals your most vulnerable self to yourself and to the world. The bruises, the lacerations, the bites and scratches, the decaying flesh: frozen in time and space, unable to move and avoid the embarrassment and shame of your appearance and place. The universal experience of grief is not pain, it is the endless questions that plague your heart and mind. In this state, battered and deformed, it is hard to recognize yourself. You remember who you thought you were: who you were known to be. And you remember the mistakes you made, the horrible things you called yourself, and the horrible things people now call you. This, at a time when you are most vulnerable and must lean on whatever identity you can summon. How easy it is to believe that you are a wretched soul, deserving of this, and that this grief is your true identity.
The truth be told, if we were true to our identity we would rarely experience an unhealing grief. If we could forgive others, forgive ourselves, see God’s hand, and make our choices only within the true unique identity he gave us, we would have never have faltered and we would remain in his peace. We would not have lost our person to bad choices. Or we would celebrate the life of the person taken from us and heal in understanding of God’s eternity. But the struggle of dishonesty about our identity begins like a quiet and unseen virus, infecting our self perception before we start to display the symptoms. And when we are laying in the ashes of our most profound loss, what we need of who we are is hardest to see.
Honesty and confession. That moment where we find ourselves with only a shallow breath remaining and no will to go on- no more self defense, no energy to fight, no sense of direction- accepting the wave of self defeat and hoping for death…that moment is our opportunity to tell God what we call ourselves. Tell God the names and descriptions of what we believe has become our identity. I told God that I believed I was alone, unloveable, unredeemable, a failure, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad friend, a bad son, a bad brother, insecure, unworthy. I imagined myself sitting in the burning dirt and brush, bleeding and broken, unable to stand. The car I was in only moments before, full of a happy family, a loving wife, a satisfied husband, now wrapped around a tree, mangled in a heap, still smoking. I wrote those names on a list as Jesus walked up behind me. Reaching down with one hand he grabbed the list, dark and shaded in gray scale and no color. As his hand took the list a light spread down the paper and my outstretched arm. His other hand grabbed me by the side and lifted me up. As the light flooded in, like a rapidly rising sun over the horizon, the landscape was revealed. I was there, again, in the valley between flush green mountains, the fire burning beside us, flames dancing as if rejoicing my prodigal return. His arm never left me, but he reached down with the other hand and placed my list into the flames. It flashed, consumed by the fire, and a dove emerged: beautiful, white, disappearing high over the surrounding hilltops. Gentle, genuine lover, caretaker, resilient, father, son, friend, protector, fighter, servant, willing; He called out the names of my identity as he saw them, written on his heart. He pointed to look above me and there were the pieces of my world, his many angels working diligently, picking up the many fractured parts, building new ones, and putting it slowly back together.
Our identity is unique to us. But it was gifted and generates its actions the same: through love. And because he first loved us, that while we were yet his enemies he died for us to live eternal as his children. There is no condemnation in Christ. That is hard to understand when the blisters of self condemnation still drain from your grief and shame. But it is true. And if we accept our honest and true identity, we have all we need to remain in his steadfast direction.
Jesus had an identity that was unique to him and served as his compass throughout his life and ministry. It was proclaimed when he emerged from the water, held by John the Baptist: ” And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Matthew 3:17. He chose not to accept the false identities hurled at him from those who loved and hated him, the world, and evil. And his path, his identity, brought us to freedom.
“Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” — Stephen King
There are some things worse than death: loss of true love and separation from God. The pain exists in the space between the connection had and the seemingly endless future of connection lost. Like a ship lost in a storm with no sails and no rudder, we are at the mercy of the wind and waves, we drown below the surface of the deep waters, or succumb to the pounding rain above. One or both may never recover. One or both may. Only one is not reliant on the limited forgiveness, love, understanding of the will of man. That of the connection of God cannot be permanently deleted. God doesn’t walk away from us with his back turned because of hurt and anger. He cannot. He is part of us. And that connection is always a choice of our own, unlike a covenant between two fallible people.
I always thought that choice was a one time event. That forgiveness was available but not free. That it required some significant strength or quantity of faith and belief that had to be satisfactory to the cosmic police to get me into good standing. That confession meant saying “I am sorry”. None of that is found to be true when you are moments from being a corpse, with nothing that made you who you were remaining, your life in utter ruins. Sorry, did not connect me to God. Honesty did. And it wasn’t my strength, or quantity of faith, that led him to start picking up the millions of pieces. I know because I had no strength or faith remaining. I was on my final breathe when he stepped in to lift me up. Surrounded by angels. And even if we are still on life support, when he comes because we were honest to him and asked the right questions, we are at least no longer lying in the grave.
What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching?
I take a deep breath in, fill my lungs to tightness against my chest wall, a relieving stretch, and then release downward, pressing, pushing, feeling. Closing my eyes I repeat. Over and over again. I fix my thoughts on God. In this case, I fix my thoughts on Jesus and keep breathing. Yaweh: breathing in, Ya, and out, Weh. Slowly and deeply as I return my chaotic mind to focus on Him, over and over. Then I asked a question: Jesus, can you be in this room here now? Jesus, can you be right here, present, in this room and on this couch in a home once filled with joy that has been shrouded in the darkness of my sins against a holy covenant and stained by the blood of broken hearts? “Yes”. “I’m here.” Like a shock from my temporal lobes that spread throughout my mind, I heard Him speak, I saw the words, I felt His presence. I would never be the same. How could I be? Let’s begin, then.
For months, I don’t know how to even begin to describe the unraveling of my world. Too much, if not all of it was wound into one person. That person meant, and will always mean, more to me than any human being I’ve ever known. But our love had different conditions. And it turns out I was unloveable and cancellable, after all. And after all, anyone except the most present in Christ would say I deserve it. But no matter how severe I messed up, my love was very true. And my heart was in that person. I only was struggling to love myself. So when it all unwinds it creates a great deal of chaotic momentum and confusion; one looks to God and hears nothing. I thought I could provoke God from His sleep with my anger, my sadness, my genuine devotion. Bargaining. Nothing. Screaming. Crying. I tried it all. But I couldn’t hear or see him through the smoke and ashes I was flinging about. I silenced Him. But He was there.
Jesus came to me- in the beautiful green mountains like rising emeralds. We were alone and a fire burned near by, well kept, and flames dancing about. He had removed my heart from my chest. It was large, as big as a volleyball, and he was wrapping in a white cloth. He placed it back into my chest and reached his hands out, palms up, scars in his palms. I looked down and blood was running from my chest and down my arms and hands. I reached out and put my hands in his and he began to bleed. His blood, dark rich red, flowed down his arms and covered my own. I asked questions, even as this vision disappeared and was replaced by a soft nothing. He showed me her pain and showed me how He sees her. I was broken, but I felt a presence. I asked if I could see her one more time and He said, yes, soon. The next morning, I awoke early to join a friend for breakfast from my old men’s group. A group that I held dear but have not returned to due to my own shame and embarrassment. I passed through a red light and there she was turning into the median. I saw her long enough to see she was safe, content, alive, well…All the things I used to be a part of. All the things I want for her.
I know I’ll never see her again. But God delivered on His promise. He spoke to me and it happened. And he talks to me still. Constantly, reshaping and remaking and finishing my real identity. The identity he gave me at birth that I allowed to be hidden. The part of me that make people feel safe and loved. The part of me that is connected to the kingdom. And He tells me what he calls me as I confess to him the horrible things I call myself. How I have longed to see God like this-even in my darkest hours with pain that I could have never fathomed. How I have longed feel His presence. And how I look forward to sharing more of it with you.
