Insomniac

Yesterday I sat down next to my pastor and friend Josh and he asked me how my studying was going.  He had just spent the last weekend very articulately and wisely making a compelling and academic case for the Bible. It’s a fine balance, someone who can present at a high intellectual level on huge topics like the trustworthiness of scripture and yet invoke in a congregant the honest truth of questions.  I know Josh has well formulated answers to all my questions, and yet he would so silently listen to my elementary angst and find ways to relate to my struggle.

I told him that this whole contemplative prayer study was not working or I was doing it wrong, but either way I was really missing the lesson in it.  I explained the ways I tried to pray like I believed God listened and responded when I’m just not sure he does, which feels more like pretending and less like faith. I described the only thing that has changed in me which is a deep grief over the brokenness of this world from mass shootings to lost loved ones, and how things have affected me in a disproportionately personal way so all I can utter is, “Lord have Mercy”.

We explored a couple of ideas, the first being that it may be that I am not naturally wired to experience God in this way.  Just like anything else in life humans variate on what ways of interacting with God they’re more inclined towards.  The idea we explored was that contemplation isn’t an end in itself. Prayer is only meant to change us so that we become compassionate for the brokenness of this world. 

I was talking to my friend Annette about this at dinner tonight.  She would tell me sometimes that she would wake up in the middle of the night with a deep empathy for someone and find herself praying for them.  I have been on the receiving end of this prayer many many times before and it has always meant so much to me, so much that I wish I could be that for others.  But I can't figure out how to. 

I’m on these hormones for our IVF treatment and they are giving me insomnia.  Typically I’m the type of person that could pretty much always sleep.  I never wake up in the night, fall asleep quickly and could probably nap every day too if I had time and no goals.  Sleep and I have a happy relationship, we welcome each other with open arms and I’m pretty sure people that have a hard time sleeping hate me, because I brag about my long nights of unconscious bliss.  So Annette hates me a little I think, she would never say that but when we shared a bed in New York and she fell asleep at sunrise I can’t help but think she glared at me across the darkened room for leaving her alone in the wake.

The universe is paying me back for all of my cat-like sleeping so now I get to stare at my ceiling and contemplate life’s great questions while the hours slow to a snails pace.  I got up the other night at 4:00am and started doing lunges around my house, because why the hell not? I read a book, watched a few episodes of Gilmore Girls (don’t judge me, I can’t handle that right now), did some instagram stalking, laid in pigeon pose for a while and finally sleep found me…for a hot second.

When I woke up again I remembered how Annette uses her time to pray for people.  I thought about how generous that is and the great use of the endless minutes in the middle of the night. I thought about using my time wisely like her, then I got mad about being awake and went in the living room to waste more time.  Ok so I failed.

The hard thing about intercession is that is really forces the question of God’s intervention.  I cannot say with any sense of clarity whether or not God intervenes in this life, essentially whether or not prayer changes things.  It seems to passionately pray for someone means that you believe that your prayers will do something, that prayer is not in fact, only a tool used to change who we are but could actually change circumstances.  I told you about this woman I have been following on instagram who has five children and her husband has been sick with stage four melanoma.  They are very young and vibrant and he was a body builder and now looks like a pre-pubescent boy.  I have been watching him slowly loss the battle with cancer via social media and although I have no idea who this woman is I cannot stop thinking about what a tragedy this is.  It’s really weighed on me in abnormally personal ways and when she finally posted that he has passed away I couldn’t sleep.  I kept thinking of her and repeating, “Lord have mercy.”

I cannot say if this prayer mattered or if was just an unharnessed amount of empathy, but if there is anything to say to the brokenness of this world it’s that, “Lord have mercy.”

Heaven Forgive Me

There is a security that comes with being raised in a specific system of belief, but there is also a great struggle if one needs to questions this system.  When educations, degrees, worldviews, spouses, friendships and sources of hope are all connected to a belief, it takes a lot of fire in one’s soul to ask even the smallest question of it.

I found myself here a couple of years ago, with a masters degree and a career in Christian work, not to mention everything else in my life wrapped up in a hope of a Christian God.  It began with a few small questions about the specifics of theological understandings, which opened up more inquisitions.  One after another the questions came all linked, each query connected to and dependent upon another.   So further and further I extended into the unknown and an examination of my faith, I wandered with trepidation, until I was at the very base of it all –Is there a God?

My assumption through this whole process has always been that I would go on my little journey of faith just to find myself back where I started with nothing but a better understanding of why I believe the same thing I’ve always believed.  It’s curious though, it turns out to be really authentic when asking a question you must be willing to find whatever answer is really true, and open to the possibility that you might have been wrong all along.

I remember listening to a ted talk radio hour about believers and doubters.  The first interview was with the daughter of a well known Christian evangelist and when asked if her father ever doubted she said, “no, because God’s a gentlemen and he doesn’t lie.” I grabbed that phrase out of the air and held it in my hand as if examining a fly, something I had seen a million times but never really looked at. It was flimsy, and suddenly that statement felt like the mascot for all the defensive answers that have been shelled out to me when asking questions of faith. As I was staring at this philosophical fly in my hand another interview came on with a woman describing her experience of leaving the Christian faith and I related to her.  She was honest, she felt authentic like she wasn’t covering for anyone or anything, and I had a terrifying sense of relief at what it might be like to just let it all go and to stop this scrappy fight for faith.  I was petrified because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to believe, afraid it might not be true, afraid that everything my life was based on was false, but mostly afraid that this existence might actually be that hopeless.  So I had a breakdown and sobbed in my car for the foundation that I felt was falling out from under me, the very basis for hope being ripped from my view of the world. 

It’s all the risk we take to fully understand something, but a risk we must take all the same. Unclenching our fingers in hopes that the truth remains, that we might still believe at the end of our search.

In his book Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton describes his own experience of exploration of his faith like a sailor looking to discover new land, finding himself on what he thinks is an undiscovered island on the south seas, only to realize it’s still England. 

“I fancied I was the first to set food in Brighton and then found I was the last.  It recounts my elephantine adventures in the pursuit of the obvious.  Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth.  And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it.  When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom.  It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing tradition of civilized religion.”

Maybe it’s a fools errand for there is no undiscovered land.  Or maybe the whole point is that the adventure on the high seas is really what makes us who we are. So I’m getting on a boat to see what I find, tears streaming for the innocent faith I once held, but a heart pounding for the truth I’m desperate to find.

This is a place where I will recount such a journey, of learning about and understanding my faith from 5 perspectives within the Christian tradition.  I'm hopeful along the way that I'll find God...

That He'll find me.

That I'll find me.