Tatters

I've been struggling a lot with depression recently. It's part of the whole "burnout thing" but it isn't the first time this has happened... it is the worst since I have been a Christian though.

I can't really estimate how long this has been around - it's hardly a binary state - but though life got particularly hard this last term it wasn't until the middle of June, when my degree ended and the change of pressure inevitably hit, that I have been steadily failing at keeping on with God... Often, you see, it was a way to draw near to Him; a place where being dependent resulted in intimacy, no burden was too great and every struggle could also be seen as a blessing. Not a place of perfection but somehow different to how things are now... where, though nothing much has changed in my actual world, it just sucks. I have been rubbish in no uncertain terms and I ain't gonna dwell on my Roman's 7ish tendencies (link). Nor will I exhort the Romans 18:28-ing (link) of them with any stories, though I have them (God is good). Rather I have an analogy.

It is of course resistance training. When you work out it isn't the rep's you can do that are building muscle, but the ones you really can't. Before I was coping, so up goes the pressure. Simple. I am getting strengthened for the next fight I gotta be in (link). Turns out the stuff from before wasn't enough to grow me beyond my limits. I signed up for it with some reckless enthusiasm about being refined and thus made ready to defeat the nasties in the world, and it seems that prayer gets answered... so I am broken, like the ragged, sinewy fibres of a pumped and aching bicep.

I am not going to tell you that I am ok with this. I sometimes am (rarely) and I will be in the future but it is chronically painful a lot of the time and I am very very shaky in my sinful - that is unloving, lifeless, hopeless and generally dodge - attitude and actions. My faith is a wreck, nothing seems to be working out, and I'd rather I was driving along just dandy down the motorway that is my life instead of stuck on a back road with a girt fat tree across the path... or some such. But something put into words by the father of Sam (link), whose tragic death can teach us all a thing or two about putting up with crap, has spoken to me with a far better analogy:

I had a thought today.

It may seem a little random to you but whatever.

As I was thinking about my faith it seemed that it was in tatters around my feet. shreds of it lay all around.

And then I thought perhaps a good way to picture what faith is like would be to imagine a warehouse full of expensive material, sillk or something like that.

Then imagine that someone had placed a bomb right in the centre of the warehouse and blown it up. bits of cloth would fly all over the place and the once beautiful rolls of silk would be chard, ripped and ruined.

and now imagine me (or you?) standing amongst all the bits, the rags that were once silk sheets but are now no more than tatters.

Surely that cant be can it?

Surely our faith is so precious that it must remain in tact. Surely there are things we cannot question!

As I am thinking these thoughts I run around and try to find matching shreds and try to piece them together but I reject the idea of trying to put them back together since they can never again be the beautiful thing they once were, they will never, ever be beautiful, silky smooth, unblemished rolls of perfect silk.

But thats all I have left.

So, I gather the bits together, I carefully and lovingly sew each piece to its partner, and slowly, very, very slowly I rebuild. eventually, after the most amazing ammount of effort I get to the point where I have connected all of the pieces together and now I have a roll of silk again.

But my roll is scarred, stitched together with unskilled hands, threads sticking out here and there, a piece connected back to front and not exactly pefectly straight edged. no longer perfect, not by a long chalk but its there. All my work has seemd to have been for nothing.

How can I present my broken and ripped faith to Jesus? how will this inadequate, distorted thing ever be good enough to get me into heaven? Can I ever use it again? How dare I? what would Jesus, the "author and perfector of our faith" think.

I have not the first idea but in fear, I approach Him and present what I have.

I hold out my faith, falling apart at the seams, ragged and torn to my Lord.

He reaches out a hand to take it.

His hands are the strong hands of a carpenter, hard skinned and knocked by years of practice, but most of all I notice his wrist, torn through, a ragged hole where a nail once ruined his perfect body, I look up and see his eyes, lovingly examiniging my broken faith, his head is marked by thorns, his back is ripped to shreds by a whip that broke his body and his side is ripped open by a spear "just to see if he was dead".

and then I realise, the author and perfector of my faith understands better than I can ever do what it means to be stood among the pile of shreds that was once your beautiful faith. He knows what it means to be crushed, broken and seperated even from God in a way that I will never know.

So now I can try.

At least I can try to pick up the piecses of my faith, find a needle and thread and start to work out how it all goes together.

Thats where I am at right now...

"For it is by grace that you are saved through faith and this is not the result of your own good deeds so that no one can boast."

any one got a needle?

Thinking like this doesn't come easy to me, mind; I don't always have the 'give-a-damn'-ness to want to do that, even having realised the grace both in this parent's attitude and Jesus's actions. But the very nature of that grace necessarily says that I don't have to bring anything myself to the table to be changed. Two days after starting this post I already feel a bit more alive... and if my experience and (meagre) trust is anything to go by then this fight is not over yet...