Earlier this semester. my friend Lucas recently twisted his ankle badly while we were playing ultimate frisbee at school. I was pretty close to him when it happened, and we heard a loud pop and so we thought he had completely broken it. Thankfully, though, a visit to the ER revealed that he had a severe strain and would need to stay off of it for a few weeks. So, he was hobbling to and fro on crutches, and it got me thinking about the last time I was on crutches. I had also twisted my ankle playing basketball at school (our games get pretty intense, I guess!), and I thought it was going to be jacked up for months and months, but God healed it up relatively quickly. But while it was healing, I couldn’t do much of anything. And I couldn’t go anywhere without the crutches. Heck, I couldn’t even make it into the next room without them, unless I wanted to get down on all fours and attempt to crawl on the carpet while holding my injured foot high in the air. It was pretty crappy, and I lost any ability to be self-sufficient, but that was just how it was, and how it was going to be for a while until I healed. Until the situation got better. I just had to wait it out, and I had to rely on my crutches to keep going.

I am getting a lot of silence. Well, honestly, I’m not getting a lot of silence, I’m getting a lot of “Do you trust Me?” and “WAIT!”. But to me, if it’s not a “Yes,” it basically feels like silence.

Well, all of that got me reflecting on how I am definitely in a rough emotional season where I am crying out to God all the time to come through. In various ways, in pretty much every area (physical, professional, familial, social). To help me. To answer some life-changing prayers. To rescue me. To show up powerfully. And I am claiming verses like “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in behalf of those whose hearts are blameless toward Him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9). And just believing with my entire heart that He will respond. But I am getting a lot of silence. Well, honestly, I’m not getting a lot of silence, I’m getting a lot of “Do you trust Me?” and “WAIT!”. But to me, if it’s not a “Yes,” it basically feels like silence.

Anyway. You’ve been there. Maybe you are there right now. It pretty much sucks. It’s not a fun place. Rather, it’s a very lonely place filled with miserable nights and sad songs and that deep ache down in the core of you that just comes up out of nowhere, and it happens so often that you’ve begun to become used to it. And it kind of helps to physiologically confirm your fears and doubts, and allows you to cope by embracing resignation for a while, because to keep on hoping right now is just too painful.

It’s a very lonely place filled with miserable nights and sad songs and that deep ache down in the core of you that just comes up out of nowhere, and it happens so often that you’ve begun to become used to it.

While we wait on God and our hopes and dreams and His promises to be fulfilled, we are told to not really rely on any “crutches” to get us through life. You know, stuff we lean on to keep moving forward. We are told (and sometimes scolded) that God is to be our everything, and we shouldn’t need alcohol or drugs or sex or makeout sessions or raves or Internet pornography or video games or an excess of anything just to get us through. And maybe you don’t *need* any of those things. I mean, I don’t. Not that I don’t *want* to mess up sometimes. I do.

But I have been thinking a lot about this – I definitely still have “crutches” which I lean on in these long periods of silence and waiting. And we can talk for hours about how the Joy of the Lord is to be our strength, and we can point our eyes towards Eternity, and we can remind ourselves to buffet our body like Paul, and pummel our flesh, and deny our desires, and live sacrificially and selflessly, pouring ourselves out for others like Jesus did. Completely and utterly. But if I were honest with myself, I would say that I can’t do that. And then someone might say, well, you need to get out of the way, and let the Lord live through you – and then you can! And I would say in return, I am doing my best, but I am not Jesus, and I am not Paul. And they would say, but the same power that conquers the grave lives in you! And then I would just walk away. Because they just don’t get it. And I then I would go find someone else around who I can be real.

So I was thinking, what am I currently “using” just to get through – and are these things healthy? But, if they are not God and God alone, is anything healthy? And who decides and defines “healthy” anyway? Shouldn’t these sorts of things be between you and Him anyway, and no one else? Okay. I keep going on and on, so let’s focus and get back to my current “crutches.” The things I am definitely leaning on, to cope during this season of silence. While I am waiting on Him, and crying out to Him to please answer my prayers, I have been:

doing yoga
learning guitar and practicing a LOT
reading a TON of books
doing a 18-month intensive biblical leadership course
going to boot camp and working on my fitness
playing sports with my amazing FAU friends
mentoring a high schooler
mentoring some guys at school
talking to my own mentors
writing a book
trying to impact many, many lives nationwide through my professional work
helping out my family with stuff
praying for the hopes and dreams of loved ones
being available for others

That’s pretty much it. The point in sharing that is not to get high-fives and “way to go’s” but to tell you that I have packed my days and nights to the brim so that it cuts down on the time I have to feel sad and bad about myself and my current situation. I lean on these activities to help me through life. I am completely and shamelessly using them to fill up the hours of my days so I am not bummed out all the time because of God’s current decision to hold back from me (which I know is ultimately for my good, but which – as I mentioned – is not fun at all). I am pretty sure that I do it to numb myself, to medicate myself, to anesthetize myself, to inure myself to the silence I am hearing and experiencing from God (and, honestly, from others which I’m sure is part of His plan).

I am pretty sure that I do it to numb myself, to medicate myself, to anesthetize myself, to inure myself to the silence I am hearing and experiencing from God.

Now, while doing all of those things on a weekly basis to just get through this current season of life, I am still spending time with Him in a variety of typical and nontypical ways. He is still my first priority, He has my heart, I love Him with all that I am, and I am honestly desperately seeking His face and His will for my life, and pursuing right living, and wanting to honor Him every moment of my life. I don’t have to prove my devotion to anyone around me. I know my heart, and He knows my heart.

That said, though, I know I am not currently experiencing the joy of my salvation. And I don’t really feel like I am living victoriously above my circumstances, at least emotionally. I’m doing all I should be doing, all I want to be doing, but if I can be real, I am in a deep valley, and I am struggling. And I want that to be okay. I often think of Job, and in his personal nightmare – when his entire world fell apart – God didn’t expect him to do anything to pull himself out of it. God didn’t ask him to pray more, or try to trust more, or read more Scripture, or die to his own desires more. Job was hanging on by a thread. But He was hanging on. And I think that’s all God wanted Him to do and needed Him to do. Sometimes, life gets just that hard, for absolutely everyone. And when that happens, all you can really do is lean on other things, and just hang on tight somehow to your faith in Him. And I want that to be enough.

I need these “crutches.” I do. I just do. And I don’t know how to make Him my everything any better or any more than I already am. And it just cannot be about me performing to a certain standard. Or being a certain way. It is not. I know that. I’ve been through enough to realize that nothing I do or not do can flip a switch to cause Him to move on my behalf. It just doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t work that way. Realizing that was so very liberating from my performance-based past, and now I realize He just wants me to do or not do because of my love for Him. That’s it. Nothing should motivate me apart from my desire to demonstrate my love for Him.

I’ve been through enough to realize that nothing I do or not do can flip a switch to cause Him to move on my behalf. It just doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t work that way.

So, the bottom line is and the truth is that I’m basically just enduring right now. I am basically just surviving life, and leaning on my crutches to keep me going forward. But I am trying to remind myself that the only thing that matters is that I keep hanging on, and keep doing it out of love. And that somehow, it is enough.

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