Day 11: The Back of Your Head

You wandered through my dreams again last night, silent as you often are, watching me from a distance. I noticed you every time, for it was only in my dreams that you look at me at all, anymore. When I was able to see you in the real world, I saw only the back of your head, trying as hard as you could not to look at me, not to face me again. Why? I do not know.

When did I stop seeing God in your eyes? You used to look at me, peering past the facades I might have worn into the weak and the vulnerable. What you saw there might have frightened you. But you seemed to love me anyway.

Through that gaze, I began to understand what God must be seeing. Looking deep into my soul, you stared me dead in the face and embraced the strange and weary brokenness. I spent so much time constructing my outer shell, but you reached beyond and into the very heart of who I am. I shared my darkness. You did not fix it or ignore it. You embraced me within it.

You claimed I did the same for you. I held you in my ignorance, not understanding how to fix your problems, so I simply listened. I tried to love you with all of my might, and you let me into your darkness, too. Within that darkness, I saw the love of God shining through--redemption and salvation, worked out in fear and trembling. Our shared vulnerability seemed to be bringing me closer to the very heart of God. Her love so often was shining in your eyes.

Those eyes don’t ever seem to land on me anymore. I thought I caught them the other night in a dream, looking at me once again. For a moment, there was peace. But when I caught them in real life on rare occasions, the light I sought was not there--only my own reflection, shrouded in darkness.

Even if my soul could have found rest in our shared home, I could not have stayed. That home seemed an empty temple, where an oracle had lost her power. Once God spoke to me through the girl I loved, but that girl is gone, and God seems now to be silent.

I suppose I could enter into some bad theology about how I had set you up as an idol in my mind, replacing God with you. But I always recognized the profound difference. My love for you began and ended as a wish for your betterment, which is how I could console myself when you left. But you were not God; simply a broken vessel which He used on occasion to reach me in the midst of my darkness. “I have sinned” is a sort of half-reflective answer, really an excuse as a way to blame myself for something beyond my control.

We often like to wrestle such control away from God, making ourselves the victims of our crimes. That is not to deny my responsibility for what happened to bring about this end. But I do acknowledge that I do not understand what or why it occurred. There is not a simple answer I can point to, some excuse that I can ‘learn from’ only to repeat again, because the root of the problem does not lie therein.

There are a plethora of other bad theologies I could cast upon God, as if this is some cosmic test to prove whether or not I am devoted enough for His calling. If I complete the seven tasks set before me, then I will be rewarded with the perfect life. Kill the lion, capture the boar, steal some apples. Except, of course, this story must be Christianized: the lion is all the things I idolize, the boar is my sinful nature, the apples some romantic reversal of Eden where everything turns out right in the end. That’s how the Christian journey works, right?

Since I idolized you, the love you gave to me was never from God. That’s why it was so easy to throw away.

But I know that isn’t the case, because in order to get over all of this, you had to make me into a monster. I became your lion to slay, your boar to capture, your apples to steal only to crush and spit out. Then God will really love you. I was an evil to be rejected, and now life will come.

Just like the rock, I was cast behind your back, never to see your face again. You look only in dreams, chancing glances when you think I cannot detect you. I stand waiting and hoping that once, just once, you might turn to me and see me for who I am, not the monster you have made me out to be.

When did I stop seeing God through you, and why? Perhaps the Christian story is one of people constantly seeking out the good in suffering. But that does not mean that the suffering does not happen. I stood on the verge of immeasurable joy with you by side, a stairway to happiness on one side, and a steep drop into a canyon of brokenness on the other. Sharing our true selves had brought us to that point.

In the end, I fell into that canyon, and began to run away from the cliff as quickly as I could with my many wounds. My healing has forced me to turn around, and I have begun to climb that mountain again, this time alone. It is a lonely climb, I will admit, and I much preferred it with you by my side. But the road to joy is a long one, and ultimately I must travel it, at least for a little while, with only myself and my God.

Hopefully, one day, I might get by with a little help from my friends.

Day 11: Eighteen hundred and seventy-five miles to home. Maybe only a few more to me.

Day 10: Just Past the Point of No Return

I awoke this morning late in the day, my body unusually tired from the night before. I had finished a long stretch of riding after saying goodbye to my friend Mordechai the night before, and had struck the hundred mile mark before deciding to call it a night. The sun warmed me with her friendly rays, but the wind competed with her affections, leaving me to cuddle into my blankets all the more.

“Just call me,” he said the last time we talked, “anywhere within a hundred miles, and I’ll come get you.” I knew he was mostly joking about the specific distance. Surely, if I went just one more mile, I could still have my rescuer come and save me from my decision. But still. Asking someone to come a hundred miles.

I had come a long way, but maybe this was time to turn back. Waco has plenty to offer, even if I did not go back to Baylor for a semester. Maybe I would just hang around and annoy my friends, or get a job working with the homeless. I could busy myself pretty readily. I am good at that. I always have been.

But why would I be doing all that? Would I just be waiting the semester out, until the summer came, and then waiting out the summer, until the fall came again? Always putting off what I need to be happy, as if I can obtain happiness if I just... try... harder...

Patience is the virtue of the investment theory of happiness. Patience, because happiness is fleeting, and only for a moment, so not worth pursuing at all. But that happiness and what I am experiencing now are different, in some way. As I ride, it hurts, but I am free. I am alive. I am happy.

Not the sort of happiness that comes from sitting with an old friend or having a laugh with some new ones, but much more like that than the sordid happiness that arises from winning a level of some phone game or successfully answering all of the emails in your inbox. Those in the latter half really seem to me now to just be distractions from this other happiness. Perhaps I am not really making that much progress towards my goal, but the process of getting there has been so much more satisfying than I thought possible.

The idea that my worthiness, and thus happiness, depends upon my accomplishments has plagued my entire existence. If I invest now in the future me, then I will be happy in the future--but my future me is often so busy investing in his own ‘future me’ that he forgets to be happy when he deserves it. As Michael Oakeshott says, “The future is the Moloch to which the present is sacrificed.” If we cannot turn back on our lives and point to specific items in which to take pride, then we deem our lives not worth living.

What of the simple farmer, who lives his entire life simply providing for his family? Does he live a life utterly devoid of meaning, just because his was not a life with a thousand mountains of glory? No. Perhaps he even lives a better life than people like me who measure themselves by their accomplishments. My worth can only ever equal the sum of all I have done, and when compared to anyone that history remembers, my story is less than insignificant-- it is paltry in the pantry of world goods.

The farmer, though, can turn to his fields and say, “In you, I have found meaning. The ground under my feet needed to be tilled, and so I tilled it. In the steady tilling of the field, I discovered the way in which God gently kneads my soul, working in me so that I may be tender enough for seed to grow. Then the ground needed planting, and so I planted. In the steady dropping of seeds, I discovered the way in which God drops tiny, almost meager scraps into our lives, that grow into the most meaningful of experiences. Then the crops needed watering, and so I watered them. In the steady watering of the crops, I discovered how God will give us just what we need to grow, in the manner in which God calls us.

“And I did not just live when the harvest came in. My life was there in the tilling, to be celebrated because I am alive. My life was there in the planting, to be celebrated because I am bringing in new life. My life was there in the watering, to be celebrated because even with all I could do, I remained dependent on the mercy of God for every day.”

What lie has infected my soul so as to turn me from this simple truth? Why have I surrendered the happiness that could be mine in each day, in order to obtain some vague happiness in the future? Why am I so afraid to leave it behind, and to embrace happiness every day?

My foot finally pressed down on the pedal before me, and I began my journey once again. My goal lies before me, spread out emotionally ad infinitum. But now, I lie past the point of no return. I only pray that I will not turn back.

Almost as a test to my devotion to my newfound appreciation for happiness, God began to set the sun in the most beautiful way, between two distant hills, just seven miles into my journey. I pulled to the side of the road, and put down my bike, knowing that though I had given up accomplishing my specific goal, that here was a moment for happiness. I sat in the dirt, pulled out my dear friend Rosie, and began to play a song as my friend the sun went to sleep.

Day 10: Nineteen hundred and eighty-six miles to home. Maybe only a few more to me.