unmeasurable truths and untraceable connections (& what is waiting?)

saturday musings #4

“There were truths that couldn’t be measured. There were connections that couldn’t be traced. There were mysteries that couldn’t be unshrouded. There were ways to hold someone’s hand even when that hand was buried far under the ground… There was sadness, there was never-ending sadness, sadness that left you motionless in your bed, sadness that chased you away from home day after day, sadness that could make your heart feel like a stone.

But there are miracles too.”

- The Miraculous, Jess Redman¹

Standing still in uncomfortable circumstances is nearly impossible to do. As a type A planner personality, sitting in a place of unknown has never been an option for me. I think for most of us, standing still is the last resort. Actually, standing still is the thing we don’t do until it’s forced upon us. At least, I suppose I can say that is what happens to me—repeatedly.

I run, run, run—and bam—I screech to a halt, millimeters from a very solid brick wall. I run my hands all over it, get myself one of those industrial ladders, desperately trying to scale it. The frustration sets in as the higher I climb, the taller the wall grows, up into the sky, until I pause for two seconds and acknowledge there is no way over it. Well, if I can just see over it, that’ll be enough. No seeing over it, either. There is absolutely no way for me to glimpse the other side.

At this point, this is where my demons catch up with me—you see, it’s a perennial cycle, one that I know is coming. And as angry as I become, seeing myself turn the corner only to go round this all too familiar block again, the anger, bitterness, and refusal is what drives me.

For years now, if you asked me what image was brought to mind at the word ‘travel’, it would be me, standing on the edges of the Cliffs of Mohr, with a howling wind whirling about me and storm clouds overhead. Crashing ocean against solid rock and the false yet fantastic idea that the horizon line stretches into infinity.

Standing still.

While all of nature dances to her music, one creation stands still, intent upon simply being alive. Why can’t it be this easy in reality, is so often what I wonder?

Six years ago, something began in my heart that has reached a crescendo in the past four months. Outrunning my monsters only added to their stature and to my fear of what would happen when they finally caught up. At some point, it was only by God’s grace that He allowed me to be faced with that wall so that I had no option but to turn around and meet what had been waiting for me, growing larger in the shadows. In these months, these metaphorical monsters under the bed and emotional havoc-wreaking skeletons in the closet have come out to play, and I suppose it’s just the time considering Halloween is around the corner.

It was only when I turned back to stand my ground rather than hightailing it out of the uncomfy that it dawned on me: the worst imaginable sight awaited me—only a mirror with my reflection staring back. It was a Dorian Gray situation, absolutely. And I hate what I saw. The hate has grown and grown, only making the picture more ugly, grotesque, and monstrous in every way. I use the present tense, because I don’t call these Saturday Musings for nothing. It is a battle I suppose I still wage, facing myself.

But there is one part of the fight that has shifted to surrender, and that is my fight waged against God. Staring back at myself was not only a place of intense discomfort seeing just how far I had strayed from where I wanted to be, but it gave me the gift of getting back into the ring to wrestle with God. Stepping back, picking up my ball, and going home in a sulk, had left me completely open to the attack of the Enemy.² Being forced to either forsake the faith that had buoyed me or struggle with the God that enables faith, those were the two options.

In a moment, it was either stand still or give up. It was the mercy of God that He gave me the heart to choose the former.

The second that I could stand still, could let go of all, is when I am able to wait upon Him. All of my running had left Jesus far behind, carrying my emotional baggage, and not leading in any capacity. How can we walk in step with Him, when He’s doing a work someplace in our hearts that we don’t want to be because we are afraid it will hurt too much? There is something to be said of unity with Christ being almost like a surgery. Rightfully so is the Church labeled a hospital for the spiritually ill.

Stillness in my deepest wounds whilst Christ tends them has been the deepest pain that I could ever imagine. Knowing that running away will only set me farther behind has been the trial of my life. Jess Redman’s quote that I began this ramble with is the musing I stumbled upon in my journals, along with Psalm 27 in another one, which I will come to later on.

Stillness and Waiting are two sides of the same coin. This I think I have always acknowledged. But the demand to know what I was waiting on set me up to conditionalize how long I was still for.

God, I can be still for this long, and then I’m going to move on the vision I think you placed on my heart. You don’t expect me to just wait around, do you?

Unmeasurable truths and untraceable connections.

Mystery upon mystery.

And the longer I fought with it, the more painful the stillness was. I was still fighting. Until I began to accept all of the pain in its fullness, to recognize the pit that I was in, to realize that sometimes pits lead to the highest airy reaches, I was still fighting the Person who could cure me, and more importantly, provide hope.

Psalm 27 says,

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!

Mystery.

Unknown.

Waiting.

Stillness.

How I hated these concepts. These seasons in which I grew despondent, frustrated, lazy, and purposeless.

Little did I know,

The creation of the beautiful can only be born of laborious love and the waiting that often makes us ache.

Time.

And time alone, creates.

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel—a masterpiece of architecture combining wonder, beauty, awe, majesty, and human genius all in one.

Cliche, maybe, but anything worth having takes time. What is most worth our time is love for Christ Himself, and He cannot go against His nature, which is Love. In order for Him to love us, He will and must give us what we deeply crave, and that is a union with Him that cannot be broken, betrayed, confused, or replaced. This is what He builds, day in, day out.

Michelangelo wasn’t commissioned to complete his artwork in Sistine Chapel nor the architect himself, Giovanni dei Dolci to build it as quickly and efficiently as possible. No, indeed. That was not their aim—rather they aimed to create something that could hold the depths of time, capture the human eye, and venerate persons of great significance in history. None of which could be done overnight.

Insatiable desire satisfied with the quick and the easy cannot coincide with artistry that is masterfully completed and evokes reverence and wonder. The artists of the Renaissance era knew that to be true, and so does God, who is the ultimate Artist, Architect, and Builder.

Waiting comes calling at this point. It tugs the bell pull, begging to be let in, that it might work out its magic. There is Wisdom, too, behind Waiting, smiling in her quiet way, inviting me to welcome them in as the hands of God to humanity’s heartache. But I cannot see them if I am too busy running away, running from all that would do me good.

Beauty is begun in small strokes, working itself out into art that is regarded by thousands as something almost worth worshipping. There is labor, intention, and the artist’s eye who sees and object worth manifesting in their work.

How much more God’s paintbrush on the canvas of our lives?

Time alone grants us the gifts that our souls so crave, if we only have courage to wait. There is no other way.

There is always the quick, the easy, the efficient way—the way that just means we accomplished the desire. But accomplishing the desire cannot give satisfaction like fulfillment of the desire. I think there is distinction there. Wants, aches in our souls, are not made to be conquered or fixed, but to be fulfilled. Nothing is fulfilled overnight that lasts longer than our fickle human feelings.

Do we want our lives to be beauty that outlives our deaths?

Time.

The Dreaded Wait.

It is the only way.

And perhaps,

if we can have this perspective, the wait won’t seem so dreaded after all.

Wounds inflicted become works of art in the hands of a God who is named Healer and Creator, both at once. Healing takes time, and so does art. Running from ourselves in the fullness of our humanity never did me good, and I don’t think it ever does anyone good.

Have the courage to face what you are running from.

In the end, perhaps your demons won’t be so scary after all,

because you know that there is more to the painting than what your eyes can see now.

1. Here is the link to The Miraculous.

2. This concept is something I took from WildatHeart’s podcast Expectations and Resentment.