Ascending the Staircase

Wrestling with God has its perks.  It can be hard, certainly.  Downright painful.  Throwing out the hard questions of life, death, pain, and salvation never feels fun, while it's happening.  But there are perks.  Because there always comes a turning point, where I suddenly realize God isn't wrestling back--He's embracing me.  While I'm throwing punches, He's simply holding.  I like that God is big enough to do that.

There are times, of course, where God feels too far away for me to even go to the mat with him.  Those are hard times.  I still don't know why they happen--and I don't think it's always because of lack of clarity, piety, or effort on my part.  Sometimes, and in some situations, God feels (and maybe is) devastatingly far away.

I feel grateful that for this season, at least, I have felt God surrounding me as I throw out all the questions, complaints, and flat out doubts I have.  I feel grateful that, sometimes, I feel God hovering so tangibly around me I am sure that I might physically see Him.  

Karen Armstrong in her memoir "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness" uses the T.S. Eliot poem "Ash Wednesday" as the framework for describing her journey.  You can read it here--it's a beautiful poem.  What Armstrong latches onto in that poem is the idea that we are constantly vacillating between hope and despair, as if we're ascending a spiral staircase.  I've experienced my faith in God like that--a constant twisting in turning between belief and doubt, confusion and understanding, ecstatic joy and, sometimes, lingering emptiness.  What is constant always, though, is that God is at the center.  Think of a spiral staircase--the stairs twirl around  a central pillar.  So twirl as I might from hope to despair, God remains assuredly at the center, keeping the whole structure upright.

So for now, there is hope.  For now,  I am able to be unafraid of the cross--I am re-understanding what it means to take up my cross and follow Christ.  I am seeing it as a symbol of freedom, not a symbol of victimization.  For now, I anticipate with cheerful hope the opportunities for new ministry, new life, and new experience that lie ahead.  For now, I am undaunted by my degree, my future, and this crazy thing we call ordination.

And in the end, what I am grateful for is that when I inevitably take my next step up the staircase, when I start wrestling again, I trust that God will be there to meet me.