Living Broken in a World Dying for Authentic Faith

The cry was long, slow, and mournful. It was the kind you hear when a soul is watching and waiting for authenticity it cannot find.

The thread long since faded from Facebook. Yet, it echoes in my heart. A Christian left his sprinkler system running despite a prohibitive county ordinance. He was a serial offender. I winced.

The post dripped with righteous and justifiable sarcasm. And, as Facebook does, one comment invited another.

It was like a train wreck I couldn’t stop watching. I didn’t want to keep reading and being embarrassed by ‘my kind’, but I couldn’t look away.

I watched the stories unfold. I read as far as the one about a high powered, fancy car driving, preacher-man who routinely ran a four-way stop in his community.

Courtesy A. Squires

I smiled wryly thinking about mobsters who got away with murder – until tiny little numbers did them in. It was racketeering, not murder, which unraveled their empires.

I wondered how the offenders would have reacted had they known they were on Facebook display. Would they have been chastened and repentant? Would they have been arrogant and entitled?

What’s the use of living a big, public faith if the Devil is in the details? You see what I mean, right? I wonder how I measure up when others are reconciling my faith.

When I offer up my tattered faith, will it resonate as true and trustworthy? Will I only provide more Facebook fodder for those

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who are waiting and watching for authenticity? If perfection is required, I’m lost in the noise of failure.

We’ve stitched up the broken places of our life until all that’s left is a rag tag survival quilt. I pull the tatters close like a mother relishing shreds of the last baby blanket left in the house.

There is no sweet smell in which to bury my nose. No corner remains to rub against the weary cheeks of my soul. I look in the mirror, and mocking thoughts echo back.

You. You and your broken life. The legacy of your brokenness will last long after you are gone. Why do you keep trying? Who is this God before whom you weep? Where is he now? Who’s gonna buy the authenticity of your faith? Loser.

The chiding voice says my faith must be spit-polished to shiny perfection for authenticity’s sake. No one in this Photoshopped magazine spread, Pinterest happy world wants to hear about a broken down, weary, sweaty, hard fought for, tenacious faith. N.o.b.o.d.y.

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Yet, I look around me at the bloody landscape of a dying world. A world that is clamoring and gasping for spiritual authenticity. Watching so closely they know when we run a four way or leave a sprinkler churning and spinning day after illegal day.

I try to think of someone I know whose life is without pain or crisis. Someone whose life is Pinterest or Kardashian beautiful.

The truth is sobering. I am not alone. Every single Christian I know who is living a life of authentic faith is hurting for one reason or another. None of the wounds are easy fixes. We are all living out our faith in the trenches. Trench warfare is neither easy nor pretty. Nor pinnable.

I wonder who is watching when I am unaware. When the Devil creeps into the details of my life, will a soul gasping for authenticity cry out, “A-ha! I gotcha!” and sit back smug and self-satisfied because I have lived down to his or her lowest expectations?

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When I tell the truth that faith is work and often yields no immediate reward, will the words resonate in a life giving way? Will the authenticity of my faith take root and grow in someone else’s life?

I am living a broken and imperfect life and faith in the midst of world that is dying for authenticity. If you think you are too broken to be fixed, you are not alone. Walk with me?

Courtesy B. Creasy - 2010

Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Dancing on Broken Glass

Courtesy D. Horocks

I wish I knew when walking on eggshells became dancing on broken glass. Looking back now, I can't tell you when one ended and the other began. I am sure of one thing. I am so weary I almost have to think, “Beat, heart, beat. Breathe, lungs, breathe,” to make sure both keep happening.

When my heart does beat, the thud resonates like the peal of a blacksmith's hammer on anvil. Is this what a broken heart feels like? I saw it on the news: broken hearts literally kill some women. I can understand why.

This thing that is happening to me, to us, is like some great flu taking me to the brink of emotional death. In the process, the physical exhaustion leaves me feeling like the victim of some fearful tropical disease. Sleep, even deep sleep, does not bring energetic enthusiasm with the dawn of day. I just keep doing the next thing and the next thinking I will eventually find that I've awakened out of a nightmare.

By permission and in loving memory of Christina Jones Hooker

When I wake up, I find that I am again in the midst of some tortuous replay of the day before. My own personal and inescapable version of the movie Groundhog's Day. In the process, life is dragging two sons along with me. Even though they are no longer little kids, they have begun to do what kids do.

They are taking their own inventories and seeking reassurance that they did not cause or hasten what is raining down around us. Tears fall. We sit together and pray. I say over and over, “You did not cause this separation nor did you hasten it. Let's be as calm, reassuring, and encouraging of each other as we can. Let's not let this sadness wash the rest of what we are away.”

How do you celebrate a milestone, a birthday, when 'we' are no longer 'us'? What will happen to us next month or next year? What will we do for money? The questions have begun to mount as the sons get brave enough to ask. I repeat what I repeated with daily regularity when we were homeless:

God wastes nothing in his economy. He is a good God with a good plan. He will redeem our loss in his good time.

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Inwardly, I grieve wondering if my words will be sufficient for any of us. There's school to do and chores to stay caught up on. There are decisions to make, activities to attend, and a new career to foster. I struggle against the tide of anger and frustration that over-washes us when we least expect the flood. After we are spent, I try to do the next thing despite the fatigue of brain, spirit, body, and soul.

I tell myself this new place is preferable over dancing on broken glass. When I am alone and it is safe, tears begin to fall. Early on, they are slow and quiet like the first spits of rain on a hot summer day. The soul-clouds holding back my agony reach the saturation point of no return. My sobs are thunderous and echo as if bouncing off mountain walls.

Did I give all I was to a cause that was lost from the beginning? Did I give up too soon? Should I have given up long ago and salvaged what I could? Who will I be when this mess is less a disaster scene and more a Superfund clean up site? Will my sons survive intact? Are they already broken beyond repair because of choices I made or did not make?

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My thoughts meander through the terrain of Biblical truth with which I am so familiar. God hates divorce. His mercies are new every morning. He makes all things new again. He turns our mourning to dancing. He will give us a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. He knew my days before one of them was numbered. The words seem as foreign as they do familiar because I have never walked this way before.

I look for poetry in the pain. I seek consolation in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. I tell my good God that I want to know him in the way that sets me free to say, “Jesus is too sweet for me not to trust him.” I am still that girl who wants to be his head cheerleader even after all these years and all this wrestling. 

And so tonight in the quiet of my waning tears, I whisper, “Even in this pain, I will trust in you. Give me strength to keep on walking and do so in such a way that others will see you when they see me.” 

Hello, fellow fraidy cat. Have you forgotten when walking on eggshells became dancing on broken glass? If you are walking a broken, lonely walk, I get your pain. You don't have to say a word. Just let me say, “You are always welcome here. Come back    again real soon and stay awhile?” 

Psalm 34: 18 (The Message)
If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.

Finding My Own Voice

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The words came by way of encouragement. Yet, when I read them, my heart plummeted into  my feet. The thud echoed around me as I measured the impact. My shoulders went slack as did my jaw. I felt myself bristle a bit.

Could it be that someone would seek to impose their agenda on my choices? On my words? On my blog journey? Was subtle criticism buried behind the encouragement to do more faster with more intensity?

I read the note over again trying to decide if the fatigue of the day colored my reaction. I waited a while. I read it again. I felt the same twinge in my heart as my spirit cringed anew each time.

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Sadness came in foggy wisps that mounted until my soul was dark and damp and cold. The impetus to write a new blog post stalled. I wrestled with myself and my response. The encourager has reason, I suppose, to have a vested interest in my end product and result. Perhaps enthusiasm got the better of my encourager? One can only hope, I suppose.

The note was but the first domino that sent a series of dominoes skittering across the floor of my soul. Last week I sat on the mountaintop enjoying the picturesque implication of a stress free life. I ignored the fact that I would come home to find the same life waiting for me with all its thorny frustrations. The note jolted me back to reality. If the writer knew, would a request for a do-over follow?

The message made me second guess who I am and what my journey is all about. Every half our or so, I re-read the contents. What, I wondered, had been lost in translation between the writer's intent and my response?

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I remembered the day back in May. The thought came: “If you write it, they will come.” I remember how hokey I thought it was. Even I could see the play on words from that classic baseball movie. Me? The imposter? Write my way back to God and let all the world watch it while it happened? No way. Rather than evoking silence, my hesitation just made the voice in my soul cry louder. “Write! It! They WILL come!” Despite my fears, I wrote. You did come.

So, here we are, you and I. I am stronger now than I was then. To my continuing and humble amazement, you keep coming back. I have begun, again, to see God in the details of life. Sadly, this new, impatient voice asking for a status report and something more of my writing life than I have yet produced gives me pause. It feels as tho' I am being asked to be more than I am. To do more than I feel I should be doing at this given moment.

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I did not set about to create an evangelical altar call for the masses in cyberspace the day I sat down to write about my journey. I was writing MY way back to God not trying to forge a path for you. If my journey gave you strength or lit your path, all the better.

I had a sense that there is a fraidy cat in all of us. It is a secret we keep with jealous tenacity lest others see our weaknesses and find us less than we should be. The fear we harbor keeps most of us from removing our masks. It keeps us from waging honest war with our brokenness.

Especially here in the buckle of the Evangelical Bible Belt, a hard fought, sweaty faith is frowned upon. A stiff upper lip, full of trust and praise, is required if not out right demanded. It is so much easier to evoke the blessing of the Name It and Claim It God whose plan involves health, wealth, and prosperity than it is to simply say, "Life hurts, and I find it painful when it does." 

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At last, I took a deep, cleansing breath. I never used all that Lamaze stuff in the process of childbirth. It sure came in handy yesterday. I took another one and another. I shook away the fog. The sun came out as the Son broke thru the fog of war. 

I am me. I am broken and insufficient, but this blog and my agenda for it are not. I know this assertion is true not because I am full of boastful pride. It is true because the blog does not belong to me. It belongs to the good God that urged me on even tho' we were in the wrestling match of my life. I take another deep breath. I have found my voice.

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The insecurity fades. I set the dominoes of my life in order again. I am writing my way back to God. In the process, I am hoping he will find me. Perhaps, he will find you too? 

Genesis 32:38 (Bible in Basic English)

And he said, Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel: for in your fight with God and with men you have overcome.