Another Hard Step

A couple days ago I went for a walk in the snow, but the ground was slippery and the scarf I needed to keep myself warm kept slipping off if my head wasn't down. I ended up spending almost the entirety of my walk looking at my feet, but with each step I took, a metaphor started to develop.

I went out to see the snow, but I couldn't appreciate any of it blanketing the homes; all I saw was my feet against the icy path. I couldn't look up, only watch for pitfalls. And it was a little miserable. Getting poked by branches I didn't see in time. Trudging forward through crosswalks that appeared out of the blue without even registering the opportunities for a different path. Hearing the cars around me, driving to a destination while I moved forward purposelessly. 

What struck me the most was how long it felt. With no landscapes to mark my progress and nothing to look forward to, it felt like I'd never get to the end of the road. My feet stepped tirelessly forward, but without anything to mark their time, they felt like they went on forever.

I had glimpses in these moments of more. Brief moments where the sun came out and the snow glistened and the world changed. My circumstances were the same, and yet they offered a momentary reprieve. 

But then it was back to the rhythmic cold.

It struck me how much suffering can feel like this.

Having to move forward, step by step, not really knowing where we're going or if it'll lead to a better place.

As I watched my feet, I imagined God walking beside me. His presence, His steadiness. And yet I felt limited, unable to see His face as I stared at my feet and only catching His feet in my periphery. Unable to fully grasp His presence and care. He's there, present, not forsaking you, journeying with you through the hard path, looking forward with the full knowledge of where you're going, but you can't see His fullness. His presence is good and is felt in the feet tapping out the rhythm of life beside you, and yet in the midst of that comfort, He can still feel so far away. 

These are moments that can turn us so deeply to surrender and trust. When we know we can't do it, when it all feels bad, and yet we keep stepping forward. When God feels distant, and yet we live like He is near (because He is). When we can't see how each monotonous or trying step of survival can create a path, let alone a good one, and yet somewhere we believe that God can see. That He will fashion each miserable step. Moments like these increase our dependence. They make us aware of our lack and our need even if it takes us a while to get there. They remind us that we can never do it on our own whether we're flourishing or suffering, but that He is always with us. Someone reliable for us to depend on. Someone we were created to depend on.

At the same time they can be some of the coldest, harshest moments of our faith. Because in order to fully believe that God is there, we have to entertain the idea that He might not be. We have to face the limitless unknown. We have to walk through the moments where He feels completely absent and the ones where He no longer feels good. And there's no guarantee in these moments that we will come to a deeper knowledge of our faith, so on top of the trials we're facing, we add the fear that we are losing our very faith in God.  

We can and should celebrate the way God uses trials to tune and strengthen the heart, and yet we tend to take too light a view of this process when we're on the outside of it. We point out the beauty or the potential for it too quickly instead of sitting in the grief, the frustrations, the questions with those who are suffering. Sometimes this is because we can see the beauty, and yet at times it is our very position on the outside that makes what God is doing more evident than it is to those facing all of the emotions that come with their suffering. Increasing our view of God experientially is beautiful, but while sometimes people can grasp that beauty in tandem with the hardship they're enduring, others won't fully see it until they face it in retrospect. 

It's so easy in the Church to lift up suffering. To rightly believe in God's goodness. To rightly believe that God will work for the good of His children in the midst of any circumstance. And yet in doing so, we can too easily miss the weight of the suffering itself.

We were not made to watch our feet. To trudge through the day with nothing to mark our path or give us hope. Our bodies are designed to look forward, and that is how God created us to live. It's good to make plans. To be able to watch the path before us and prepare for it. And not just to prepare but to move through it. To see where we want to go and direct our steps towards it. To desire. To dream. To have a purpose in our steps, which drives us forward.

And of course, all of this must be held loosely and surrendered to God, but our tendency to take the gift and cut out the Giver in our daily lives doesn't make the gift any less good. 

God designed us to look forward. Not so that we could raise up a life for ourselves independent of Him. Not so that we could let the future wrap around us and spiral us into worry. Not so that we could prove ourselves. But so that we could imagine, desire, create, work, step into the goodness He's put before us. So that we can praise Him for the beauty, goals, and potential we see ahead of us and invite Him into our every step. 

Sometimes we can make suffering seem like the ultimate spiritual experience. Like seeing no path ahead and stepping forward anyway is the ultimate exercise of dependence and faith, and thereby, how we should live the whole of our lives. But God made us to dream. God made us to see. God made us to hope. And when we feel like we can't do those things, we respond. We respond to not being able to live in our design. We respond to the brokenness whether it's inside or outside of us. We withdraw, we rage, we become complacent, we question, we cry, we feel dejection, we go through any myriad of emotions.

And of course, God holds them all. And in every season where our hope is tested, He's redirecting our hearts towards Him, towards something steady, reminding us of our dependence, making our faith more resilient. But let us not be too quick to dismiss someone's lowest moment as a period of growth. Let us not cast our eyes on the end result at the expense of the present hardship. Let us become a people who can believe fully in the promise that God is after our best, that He will work all things together for good, that He can transform us in the moments of trial and testing and simultaneously who can enter into suffering with others and sit with them in all the discomfort and helplessness we'd rather wish away. 

God can bring flourishing from these seasons. He can work them for our best or even bring them to hone us for His best, but that doesn't mean they are His best. These moments are not His design for the world. And the weight of living step after step gets heavier with each new footfall. 

This is not what we were made for. It's okay to react. To bring our emotions before the God who cares. The God who wants to take it all. Even in the place of dependence and faith, it's okay to be tired. It's okay to be affected by the misery you're walking through. When we know God is good, it can be hard to admit when it feels like He's bad. It feels wrong. But bringing that to Him is the only path to surrender. Bottling up our emotions might seem like the way to remain moral and upright, but it's far more likely to lead us to shame, avoidance, and resentment in our walk with God, making our trials even more debilitating.

God wants to show us His face. He designed us to look up, to work towards, to dream. And yes, God can bring His good to every trial and in the face of every heavy step, and yet the steps are still heavy. They still wear on our heart. Trials in God's hand become a place of refining, but that doesn't mean that they stop being a place of grieving, whether that grief comes out in frustration, sorrow, indifference, or any complexity of emotions. We were designed for more.