To Love Anyway

I’m sitting here with a hot cup of tea early in the morning.  It’s the remedy that works for me.  My throat feels shredded, my eyes feel swollen.  Yet I feel optimistic about the day unfolding before me.  I’m having a quiet moment of faith in the world I live in.  I’m glad I chose to keep myself hidden away from the online social world I’m addicted to.  For now, I muse, write, and do my chores cheerfully.

You know that headspace of quiet faith I’m residing in at the moment? Let me tell you more about that.  I feel joyful in God today, thankful that I believe again.  You see, when I was young, my faith was unshakable.  It was a certainty I lived in.  I was a deeply emotional and disturbed child, but that was okay with me.  God made me the way I am and I would come through it into a better person.  I was unconquerable.

Fast forward to my teenage years.  I guess that was my years of rebellion, although it didn’t feel like it to me.  I felt shut away from the world, I saw words and intentions that I never wanted to see, my safety was shattered.  I wasn’t in rebellion.  I was in fear, shock, dismay, and pain.  Uncertainty crept in and paranoia took residence.  The world wasn’t against me, because the world had enough troubles of its own.  I wasn’t against the world, because it was far more personal and familial than that.  My comfort rested in stories and structural rhymes.

The Bible wasn’t any help to me at the time.  I saw more of the world inside it than I saw what I wanted to see.  There were things I couldn’t make sense of -- massacres in the name of God, sacrifices of firstborns, contradicted verses.  There were hints of violence, hatred, and shame tucked in the Old Testament, which I was told I couldn’t just separate from the hope and renewal in the New Testament.  I wanted to feel safe in my God when no one else could comfort me. Thus, I turned to atheism. I believed, then, He wasn't real because He couldn't comfort me.

This renewed faith is much different than the faith I had as a child.  Rather than blind, angry, aggressive, zealot faith, this right here is a newborn babe finding comfort in a Father.  Picture a child in a superstore right now.  The child wants a toy.  The mother would love to give it to him, but she only has $5 left right now after the items she needed to get.  The child cannot understand why a $5 could not pay for a $10 toy.

What’s next at this point? There’s two possible scenarios.  The first one: The child is angry, the mother is frustrated.  He doesn’t understand the mysteries of the adult world.  What difference does a $5 and a $10 make?  All he wants is the toy.  It’s a simple thing that could take care of both people’s frustration right now, right away.  The mother is frustrated trying to explain to him while hurrying to get the items paid for so they could go home.

The second one: The child is initially frustrated, but the mother has made it clear to him that the toy is a possibility.  Just not right now.  In the mean time, she tells him other possibilities while calmly paying for her items.  She lets him vent his anger, comforts him, gets him to laugh, and they both are cheerfully leaving.  The child has somehow has this subtle faith that while he doesn’t understand, his mother will help him to.

I want the second one.  It’s a simplified metaphor for feeling frustrated with God not visibly answering all of our prayers.  I want to be the parent He has shown Himself to be, be the friend and person Jesus has shown us how to be.  Trust and hope.  It’s the metaphor for why we, in faith, often tell others: “God works in ways we don’t understand, we must have faith.”  As a child does not understand the ways of his parents just yet.  But it may be too simple a metaphor, because it doesn’t encompass the full pain and agony of the world.

I believe I will never fully understand the world around me, nor will I understand why things happen the way they do.  I am just a child in so many ways and many of us will always be.  The pain we all feel -- we share it.  We weep with each other for it.  And we don’t sit there and pretend that we know why things happened.  We don’t.  But the best scenario we could have is to love each other anyway.

That’s my goal.  To love anyway, even as I cautiously step through the rubble of my own past and the uncertainty of my future.  To trust anyway, reaching out once again to the Father who means so much to me.  To believe anyway, past (and within) the Bible and towards the joys of His hands reaching into our lives and changing us in ways we never imagined.

Hell is not within a child who trusts.  Heaven is within a blossoming and strengthening relationships we are all capable of cultivating.  Trust and hope; there is wisdom in that.  Believe in it, even though faith can be such a tender and shakable thing.  We’re all stepping through the fire.  And it will be okay.


ETA: And because friends have a way of adding additional insights, I'm going to add this:

On children: What it comes down to, honestly, in that metaphor is trust.

Once the trust is deeply embedded, the child is able to navigate the world on his own.

And yes, that trust will get shaken,

but he will always remember it.

He will learn from it.

It's like my previous post on that quote.  People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but they will never forget how they made you feel.  I honestly see the Bible this way, too.  What people said or did... I forget about it.  I don't always remember the stories.

I just remember how they made me feel... and how God makes me feel. He makes me feel safe.  And I'm okay.

I would never trust in a Being that couldn't make me feel this way.  I still have to walk through fire and suffer, but He has my back anyway.  That's the parent I'm going to be.  And a friend, too, dear.