As he drove me to the airport today I turned to him and asked him if he felt close to God right now. He said no. “What about you?” Same.
A girl shared her testimony at church a few weeks ago. She used to practice dark magic. Her story emphasized the spiritual warfare around us. She said that demons create campaigns against us, against families. I think the demons are campaigning me.
I believe it. If I choose to believe in God, in the Bible, I must believe in demons, too. The demons have gripped me so tight that the suffocation looks like apathy. I am not apathetic. I am dying.
Faith is not lost in a night. It isn’t only lost in the bottom of a bottle. It is lost after its sisters hope, curiosity, and wisdom are snuffed out. Faith is like a string of lights that flicker. One bursted bulb won’t make a difference. But ten sure will.
My hope is dying. I am losing my curiosity. And the demons light apathy, bitterness, and cynicism in their place.
I don’t want to lose my faith. But I don’t know that I have the strength to fight for it the way I once did. I look around this plane and it feels like everyone is sitting inside their own personal snow globe. I know it is 2:30 a.m., but how can they shut their eyes in peace when life feels so threatening? I can’t close my eyes. They sit in perfect snow globes where the outside world can’t touch them. I feel a war waging around me. Their shiny snow globes keep them safe in the pretend worlds they’ve built for themselves. I want to build a pretend world, a world where I believe God is good, and He never whispers to me.
A good God that never whispers removes the friction of my faith. I don’t lose God in the sense of HIs being and existence. But I’d absolutely lose God in person and relationship. The tension I live is only relieved when I choose the parts of God that I like and invite them into this cozy snow globe with me. Ignore the war and you will find the closest thing to peace that the world has to offer you: numbness.
If there is a spiritual war, then I can’t help but feel like the demons are winning. They are chipping away at me. Slowly. I feel it in my bitterness. The fleshy, soft heart beating inside of me slowly cracks. The soft clay molded by God was thrown into the kiln and now scrapes and scratches. Who knows, maybe the demons will even throw me on the ground. Stomp on me. Potter’s clay turned potter’s shards, scattered on the floor.
I used to see God. I saw Him in everything. Walking through the fall leaves reminded me of his beauty. The mist that sprayed me from the ocean felt like his kisses. He was in the stars, the sun, the flowers, and the rain. He was in the happy faces of the happy people that passed by me. He was in the whispers of the Spirit. I used to see God in everything.
Lately, I explain away the whispers of God. I used to count on them for faith. The more He whispered, the more I held on. But the whispers tickled my ears and sent shivers down my spine. They gave me promises that now lay flat. It has been three years. I sit in a pile of His promises to me and try to sort them out. I paste them on my wall like some detective. I study them. They are like bubbles that soar to the heavens. I try to grab hold of them. Once my fingers finally make contact with His whispers, they disappear. Is He taunting me? Or were they never really there in the first place? Is this all a figment of my imagination?
For a while, I believed. I believed God whispered. And I waited, sometimes patiently, for His invisible whispers to turn into letters on paper. Tangible paper that I can hold. I waited and waited.
My waiting became a lot less about the promises and much more about the Promiser. A good God might make me wait on His promises. There are lessons in the waiting. But if the whispers were only figments of my imagination, how could someone good abandon me in my confusion? Or worse, how could He confuse me so? The question isn’t if the Promiser exists, but if He is good. And moreso, if He is good to me. Are you good to me?
In January, my endurance gave way and welcomed a season of depression. I started the year counting the days I cried. At some point, it made more sense to count the days I didn’t. No one knew the pain I carried. Wrestling with my questions fueled my faith for two years. And I no longer desired to wrestle. I surrendered.
People say surrender is a good thing. But I don’t know that it was in my case. Waving the white flag didn’t lead me to run into a father’s open arms. Surrender meant numbness. It meant walking away from the fight that was the crux of my entire relationship with God. Choosing to no longer care about outcomes meant that I no longer felt urgent to repair what I felt I was losing with Him. Can trust be broken with God? God, I feel like you’ve abandoned me.
I feel the demons tugging at me. They are winning. But they are up against a mighty force. So if they are winning, does that mean He gave up? I don’t feel God’s tugs anymore. And I am not sure if my heart is just too hard to notice his soft touch or if He truly has turned His throne to avoid staring at my suffering.
I am not close to God right now because how can I be? I have gone to His word to ask Him the questions scorching my soul. I have learned how to tap into His Spirit. I have wrestled in prayer. And I thought I heard Him.
I liked my life better when I meditated while sitting on the rocks of the Chattahoochee River. I liked when I listened, when I paused, when I waited. But how can I do so when all that was ever whispered to me opposes my reality? I fear that He misspoke. I fear that He changed His mind. I fear that I heard Him wrong. Or worse, I fear that He sees it all and doesn’t care. He’s left me here.
My intellect and the shreds of faith that I grasp tightly tell me that I follow a good God. He cares. But how long will He let me suffer? And when will it feel like He has met me here?
I run and run to Him. Is He running towards me, too? Or is He just standing far off in the distance, looking down at his stopwatch and tapping HIs foot impatiently for me to arrive? I run and run to Him. But the past two months I couldn’t. And I felt happy. I built myself a beautiful snow globe to protect me. Numbness disguised herself as peace.
The demons don’t win when our worlds are burning. They win when our lives are perfect. When they are free from the questions that grind on us like sandpaper. If it doesn’t feel like a war is being waged on your soul, maybe it is because the war has already been won.
I still feel the demons tugging. I just hope He hasn’t stopped. God, don’t give up on me. Have grace on my unbelief. I am a dying woman crawling through the desert. Cracked skin exposed to the burning sun, desperate for a drop of water, I crawl. Slowly I crawl. But I haven’t given up. Can you meet me here in the desert?
