I finally melted down the other night.
Well, I think “shut down” is probably more accurate. The reality of remote learning and all of its responsibilities hit me hard, so I walked into my bedroom at 6:56pm, shut the door, and never came out. My people knew to stay away. Thankyouandgoodnight.
For weeks, I have been telling my kids this:
Yes, it’s a platitude, but it’s all I could offer as I attempted to parent them and help them weather this storm of uncertainty. (I mean, “This stinks. Will it ever end?” doesn’t quite get you out of bed in the morning, does it? đ )
After the other night, though, I felt like a fraud. The danger of platitudes is that they lack nuance and force you to measure yourself and your experiences against a standard that is usually impossible. I mean, no one can stay positive all.the.time.
I think thatâs why so many people fall away or never really grab on to faith. âTrust Godâ seems too simple when life starts getting really, really hard and complicated. But, for me, thatâs the beauty of it. Not in a âbury my head in the sand sort of way,â but in a âsolid footing, concrete foundationâ sort of way. Faith is the lifeline I need when the storm is raging all around me. Itâs not that I donât see the storm. Itâs that I know what to hold on to while I wait for it to pass.
I read something in my devotional the other day, and it really spoke to me. In his book, New Morning Mercies, Paul David Tripp writes:
“Real faith never calls you to swindle yourself into thinking that things are better than they are. Biblical faith is shockingly honest and true. “
In other words, true faith in God does not deny reality. Instead, it faces it dead on, knowing all the while that God is present and near and covering it all.
Truth, if it is truth, is honest about everythingâthe good and the bad. Jesus is possibly our greatest example of this. He called out sin, asked hard questions, and wasted no time getting to the heart of the issue. He didnât romanticize faith or what it meant to follow Him. There would be a cost, and it would be hard. No easy buttons or get out-of-jail passes. But that doesnât mean Jesus wasnât hopeful. It just means He knew God was just as real as the hardships and sin in the world.
As Christians, I think we often feel pressure to deny we are struggling because it might represent a lack of faith. On the other hand, we can also feel the pressure to not be âtoo positiveâ because then we seem naĂŻve or fake.
Both expectations pull us away from our actual experience and rob us of the comfort and peace that God can offer us.
We can acknowledge the hard and still fully acknowledge God.
We can be realistic and we can be hopeful.
We can lean into what we actually feel because that true and honest place is exactly where Jesus wants to meet us.
We can hold the tension of worldly struggles and heavenly victories because we are grounded in a Savior who fully experienced both. We donât have to choose. Both are true.
So, Iâve decided that we are keeping our current mantra, as trite as it may seem. We will be honest about the hard, but we also will be honest about the positive things we see and experience, too. Jesus will be our rock, but we will be flexible because we know the Holy Spirit is always at work and doing a new thing.
This doesnât make us frauds on bad days or naĂŻve on good days. It makes us honest humans who hold tight to the reality that God is present and covering it all. We will go through this storm with a faith that guides us forward, gives us hope, and gets us out of bed, day after uncertain day.
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“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Isaiah 41:10Â