Surrender can be a beautiful thing.

When things finally click and you realize there is just so much out of your control

And no matter how much goes wrong, you’re going to be alright.

I find great comfort in the idea that Christ is

omnipotent
omniscient
omnibenevolent

In other words he’s all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly and unlimitedly good.

So, surrendering *to* Jesus, makes complete sense to me in the context of my faith.

BUT.

Very often what happens when Christians “surrender all” to Jesus, they’re not just releasing the desire to control the uncontrollables,

but actually emotionally shutting down.

What looks like faith, then, in reality is a coping mechanism to ignore the festuring pain and doubt deep underneath the surface.

It’s like trying to hold your breath when something hurts until you run out of oxygen and the pain becomes so overwhelming that your body involuntarily lets out a loud gasp and a scream.

That’s
Not
Healing.

That’s a twisted form of the prosperity Gospel hoping really hard that if you have enough faith and act joyful enough, God will miraculously heal your wounds and trauma.

If this is what you’re doing, you’re gonna keep gasping out at the people you love for no visible reason until one or all of y’all finally have enough and name it for what it is:

pretending.

Faith is not just jumping out of an airplane with a backpack on hoping Jesus will turn it into a parachute. Faith is jumping out of an airplane with a tested parachute strapped to your back beside people who have used parachutes before.

Neither is faith putting on a good face when inside you’re dying.

Faith is not shouting to the wind that things are fine, everything is fine, and I’m healed! Faith is screaming out to a man you can’t even see but you’ve heard rumors about, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Faith is not plowing into the bush with no map, compass, or machete because you believe somewhere out there is a mountain peak. Faith is making plans and physically training and checking the compass and setting after that peak because for generations people have been traveling to that mountain and coming back with stories that we want to be a part of.

So many of us want to be on the mountain right now, but in waiting for it to happen, we miss the fact that Jesus isn’t gonna take us right to the top like Tolkien’s eagles. However, he is standing beside the trail head, strapped up, and ready to sweat.

Faith looks like waking up and going to therapy. Faith looks like telling your friend you’ve been struggling. Faith looks like having those hard conversations. Faith looks like plodding on even when you’ve fallen and your face is in the dirt and mouth full of gravel and all you can do is put one hand in front of the other. Faith looks like finding a quiet place and unloading all your emotions to Jesus in a death-curdling scream because you can’t effing hold it on your own anymore.

I gotta believe that Christ will meet us there, in the quiet place, listening to our screams, meeting us in reality, plowing through the bush with us, because if Christianity just looks like holding my breath as I free fall into the dirt,

My gosh, I don’t want it.

C.W.