The Slow Burn (Or, Falling In Love With God When You Always Sort Of Knew Who He Was)

In many ways, I’ve never had to seek Christ.

Growing up, He was always there: a simple fact of life.  My parents’ and grandparents’ relationship with Jesus meant that I grew up feeling like He lived in my home.  It’s a remarkable thing, really, to grow up with Jesus as a friend.

My becoming a Christian, then, was devoid of the shock and awe that others might have experienced.  I remember that I kept asking when the altar call would occur at my church’s Vacation Bible School so that I could pledge my belief.  To become saved, in evangelical parlance, felt more to me like the formal declaration of a relationship I already knew and understood to be in play.

This has been both a blessing and a challenge.

As a child, in my church, we frequently heard what we called testimonies: the salvation experiences of those who became Christians.  The stories were always dramatic, always a seeker searching for grace and forgiveness and mercy only to stumble upon it like a bright light in a darkened house. 

I found this both marvelous and foreign.  I couldn’t relate to that experience.  I lived in a home where, both metaphorically and literally, the lights were always on.  To not have known Jesus seemed strange.  Yet at times I longed for it, if only that experience seemed to inspire a passion, a frenzied adoration, for Jesus that I had not experienced.

I often shared my salvation with others trepidatiously for this reason.  Yes, I too was a sinner saved by grace, and forgiveness no less miraculous for all that it had come to me through the exemplar of a happy home and Christlike parents, but that lacks a little verve in the telling.  I hung back, content to let my friends with wilder tales do the evangelizing.

Over time I grew more comfortable with my own journey, but I often envied others what seemed to be their singular obsession with Jesus.  I too thought He was amazing, but a certain sort of familiarity can breed contempt.  What does one do, exactly, when God starts to seem normal?  I suspect I am not alone in this.

I dealt with this in different ways over the years.  I adapted spiritual practices that helped.  I let myself be inspired by others’ stories.  I asked God to give me a hunger and a desire for Him, a sort of passionate affectionate for Him, and He always granted that prayer whenever I asked it. 

And then, you know, my mom died, and I was miserably lonely, and also the maddest at God I have ever been in my life.

It has taken me several years to understand how God has been working with me through that entire experience, and I don’t doubt I am unable still to see it fully.  But what I have learned is that suffering and sorrow—the kind that runs especially deep, the kind that sends you running to God in helplessness or rage—reveals, in its aftermath, an aspect of God you didn’t previously get to see or understand.  Or maybe it’s simpler to say that God, in experiencing that suffering with you, in having experienced His own, reveals Himself to you in a new way that you only through hurt have eyes to see.

I wish I could tell you it happened quickly.  It didn’t.  Nor did it happen all at once.  This wasn’t a conversion experience—no blinding flash on the road to Damascus.  What did happen looked like this:

For a long time, I was very sad, and I was desperately begging God for help and comfort, which I did receive.

Then in spite of that comfort I felt very alone, and went through a dark night of the soul where it seemed like everything was horrible and I couldn’t find God anywhere.

Then I got very mad, and I spent a long time unloading on God, and He drained that wound and worked through it in ways that distinctly confirmed His presence.

And then life went on.

But somewhere in the life-going-on, I started to understand God differently.  The ways I had experienced Him through my sadness and solitude and anger started to settle together into a clearer picture.  I started to remember pieces of myself, and of Him, that I’d lost in that extended period of grief and despair.

I began to expand that picture of my good friend Jesus from childhood.  He was there, of course–always.  But I saw His suffering face in my misery.  I saw His calming face in my rage.  I experienced His profound affection as over these past few years I have started listening for Him in different ways and also through these experiences.

And it is really shocking.  Because this is the God I can’t stop thinking about.

I used to wonder at the wonderful old saints I knew who went through misery and talked cheerfully about how it brought them closer to God.  No thank you, I thought, and God, if possible, I’d like to get close to you without doing any of that. 

But they didn’t court tragedy, themselves.  And it’s not that God puts us through the paces to bring us closer to Him.  Rather, I think it’s that as we inevitably experience sorrow the character of God is revealed to us in the place of our sorrow, and it is impossible not to fall in love with who we meet there.

On The Spiritual Life podcast, Father James Martin recently interviewed Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe.  During the discussion, Radcliffe lingered on the concept of God’s vulnerability: that receiving the Eucharist means receiving the body of God into our hands, broken and torn, and that Christ Himself has given what is basically His reputation and His mission to the church (which has, historically, not always proven itself up to the task).  It goes without saying, of course, that the Incarnation itself, and death on the cross, were the most vulnerable experiences we can imagine.

It is that God we meet in our own vulnerability.

Back when I was so angry at God, I took an odd sort of comfort in the truth that my anger presupposed a deep and intimate relationship.  You don’t get that angry at someone you haven’t trusted or placed your faith in.  You don’t get that angry over someone you don’t love, and whom you do not perceive as owing a debt of care to you in some way.  I was mad because I loved God, and because I felt I knew Him.

I did know Him.  But not in all the ways that I could.  And the marvelous surprise is that I am newly falling in love the longer I am a Christian.  For me, the tumble into adoration didn’t come immediately, although affection and earnestness did: the passion I’ve experienced required time and trial to grow.

I don’t think it happens this way for everyone, of course.  But for “cradle believers” like me, who have been Christians since our childhood, who were born and raised in the church, it’s a pleasure to know that we can still be surprised.  That there is always more of God to uncover.