So many times I’ve thought, If only I were the total package. If only I could repair the broken parts of my life, then everything would be all right. The words if only have always illuminated my disappointments, pain, and anger. For much of my life I’ve lived in the illusion that whatever condition or circumstance my “if only” focused on, it had the power to right the wrongs and to make me a person everyone else would envy or at least a competent person I could live with – free of the self-judgment that keeps me awake at night. Meanwhile, no one I know, including my self, is living the life we once dreamed of living. [156-7]
I find the implausible promise that God has broken into our brokenness to find us there, and yet – and this is important – there is no promise anywhere that having found us he will paste our fractured life back together the way we want. [158]
To my dismay I find that my interest in God often has more to do with the disappointing condition of my circumstances than my longing for intimacy with God. I’d rather have his healing and restoration than his friendship. I’ve spent most of my life hoping and praying that God would make me complete and, for Pete’s sake, just take away the suffering and sorrow! But I’ve found myself living between groundless hope, frustration, and disappointment, knowing the whole time that I am still incomplete. Try as I might to find guarantees of completeness in the Scriptures, they simply aren’t there. There is only one gift that God promises, and that gift is God. This gift is the only reality in the universe that completes us. [158]
The closest communion with God, I have begun to discover, comes through the shedding of my tears. If grapes and grain are not crushed, there can be no wine and bread. If my life is not crushed, there will not be the closest and most intimate communion with God. [161]
My heroes are inconsistent, weak-kneed, and wobbly, inclined to believe their lives are a disappointment to God. My heroes are those whose faith has not protected them from facing crises, but their faith has brought from the crises a most remarkable gift: grace – the unexpected, unexplainable, undeserved gift of God’s love. My heroes are women and men who know that any god who guarantees protection from struggle, suffering, and sorrow while assuring the fulfillment of all their desires is a quack whose treatments only worsen the disease. My heroes know they have a God who loves them so intensely that there is no painful or shameful experience where God will not willingly meet them. [162]
