The Pit and the Pendulum

I have waited for the Lord, and I have left Him waiting for me. I have run to the Lord, and I have run startling distances away from Him. My relationship with Christ has been tumultuous — due in no small part to the pits of destruction fallen into and formed of my accord, the muddy clay dwelled in by my own acquiescence, and the flailing feet I refused to let be steadied, choosing instead to persist in my own stubbornness, crushed by the weight and the ruling thumb of my own fears and inadequacies. 

My faith, my relationship with Christ, has always seemed to abide on a pendulum, coming and going, ebbing and flowing depending not on how I perceived him to be — who I knew Him to be — but on how I perceived myself to be. Far too often, I think, we allow ourselves to succumb to the lie that we are unqualified for a relationship with Him and we allow ourselves to then disqualify ourselves from the love He consistently offers. I know I certainly have fallen and certainly still do fall into this pit — often when I least want it and when I least expect it. 
The arc that the pendulum of my faith has followed possesses two extreme ends: a complete overwhelming desire for God and a complete overpowering contempt for self.

Rarely has the pendulum found itself at rest; rarely has it found itself settling at an equilibrium between the two extremes that have ruled my heart and my mind for a little over a decade. The highest of highs linger for a second, only to be swayed, combatted, and followed by a low of an equal and opposite emotional force. And so on and so forth the pattern has repeated itself, the pendulum swaying from one end to the other, drifting and gliding through empty space.  

This repetitious, vicious cycle is one I have experienced time and again for years, always with different intervals between the painful peaks, the swift declines, the steady climbs. I remember it beginning at the age of fourteen when I was baptized into the United Methodist Church. I remember accepting Christ intellectually, recognizing the Truth of his existence, his divinity, his goodness, and beauty. I remember being able to accept all of these but being unable to extend my acceptance of Truth to what he said about me. I remember having the capacity and the audacity to tell God that I could believe what He has revealed about Himself, but that I was wholly unwilling and unable to believe in the beauty of His creation — well, one singular aspect of it: myself. 

Throughout my life, I have made myself an exception, oftentimes the exception. The one that cannot be loved. The one that is not worthy. The one that is wholly undeserving. The one that defies that reality of being fearfully and wonderfully made. I have called God a liar. I have projected my own thoughts onto the Creator of Heaven and Earth. I have put up walls and barriers, plastering propaganda of the lies I have told myself across their surfaces — the lies I have told myself He has told me. 

I have been wholly untethered, lost, and searching for answers, for pieces of a puzzle that seemed to be missing. I remember hitting my breaking point, kneeling and pleading and crying out to God on the floor of my first-year dorm. I remember the contentment — the reprieve — I found for a short while afterward. It was a contentment that lasted the duration it took Pride, in his often-used disguise of humility, to rear his inflated head and place his familiar hand upon my shoulder, luring me back into my own head. I remember searching for Christ on grounds but never fully committing, allowing my own insecurities and anxieties to perpetually turn me inward, afraid of vulnerability, and fretful of community. I remember desiring and wanting a relationship with Jesus but feeling ill-equipped and disqualified: a nuisance, a burden, an excess to what He could possibly ever want or need.

I remember seeing intellectual dishonesties and religious inconsistencies around me: yellow square tags and rainbow buttons cohabitating on the same backpacks. I remember being able to recognize this as an offense to His natural plan, but feeling incompetent, not knowledgeable enough, too distant from Him myself to confront it. I felt a hypocrite, a fraud, an imposter — the thoughts in my head inconsistent with the longing that had been ravaging my heart for years. 

For a couple more years after all of this, the aimless roaming continued. I tried to relegate God to the background of my mind and compress Him into the recesses of my heart, convinced that I would never have the know-how to know Him in the way that I so desired. Yet, in the summer before my third year, I was left with an experience that would no longer allow for running. In a wooden pew towards the back of a sanctuary in a building I little thought I would one day call a second home, God confronted me with Truth, Goodness, Beauty; He confronted me with Himself. As I sat in a heap of muddled, raw emotions — confusion, shame, regret, awe, wonder, reverence, joy — I began to harbor a heavy heart at the realization that I had two options: accept Truth where I had seen it or continue to run. Sitting in a wooden pew, staring at a golden tabernacle, I came to see Christ’s face.

I came to Him face to face, found Him present in sacrifice, a sacrament, a space that had previously only ever been a symbol. Like many, I had floated, scrambled, trudged through life embodying the first half of something St. John Chrysostom once said: “Many people nowadays say, ‘I wish I could see his shape, his appearance, his clothes, his sandals.’” Yet, it wasn’t until this moment, attending Mass for the first time in my entire life, that the second half began to take shape, that it began to hold meaning in my own life: “Only look! You see him! You touch him! You eat him!” 

I remember consistently and constantly wanting all of these things and more. I remember seeing how the Catholic faith — her Church and her beauty, the wonderful bride of Christ — held so much more depth and abundance, so much more care and dignity, so much more glory and reverence than I had ever been exposed to previously. And once I had been exposed to it I couldn’t help but to pursue it and then begin to see it in everything.

I remember being at a concert, witnessing the excitement and the build-up of emotions as the anticipation of the headliner coming on stage became palpable. I remember hearing the screams, the chatter, the cries, the laughter. I remember being surrounded by all of this commotion and emotion, yet being unable to focus on the moment I was in, wholly consumed by another. While most were preoccupied with what seemed like a once in a lifetime experience, a once in a lifetime encounter, I became entranced by the reality that the most important encounter we could ever possibly have is offered to us daily in the form of the Eucharist. Jesus Christ is present, able to be encountered and delighted in every single day. Only look and you can see him, touch him, eat him!  

All of these things came full circle recently — the bonds that held me back and the truth that flung me forward — when a friend asked me if I felt I was known and loved. If I’m honest, I couldn’t really answer, knowing that my instinctive response was of nature I still longed to be rid of yet still had an infant’s grip on. It is here that my past and present collide, however, as that first encounter with Christ in the Eucharist — albeit from afar and not a direct connection — allowed me to know what it means to encounter Truth, to behold it in all its beauty and thus become beholden to it. So, it has never really mattered, the answer to that question, what I have felt, and what I have thought. It is more a matter of if I know it — if I am able and willing to accept Truth when it is revealed. For even when I cannot recognize Christ’s love for me and His knowing me, even when I falter into stubbornness and dig a pit for myself to fall into, even when I choose to deny these truths and linger in disbelief, even though I do not deserve it and have not earned it, this Truth remains: I am known and loved by Jesus Christ. 

When all else fails, this truth remains. His love is constant, perpetual, existent outside of ourselves, and not contingent on what we can do or be for him. It is out of our control. It is a love that seeks to pick us up out of the pits of destruction, out of the muddy clay; it is a love that desires to steady our steps, to place us on a solid foundation that begins with him; it is a love whose authentic response is a new song from our lips — a song that praises him and gives all glory to the One who draws us up, the One who is overwhelmingly jealous for us.