You know, God, from the start of time, we’re told life’s not perfect. We’re told in this world we will have trouble, yet we should take heart, for You have overcome the world. Maybe we’ve all just forgotten that last part. Or maybe in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day grind, we forget about all that stuff, cause all we can see is the shit right in front of us. All we can see is how big our mountain is instead of how big our God is. But if I’m being honest with You, God, and with all of you, that is much easier said than done. Cause as y’all know – life can suck. Life can get shitty and hard and stressful and hurtful to the point where you’d rather stay knocked down as opposed to getting back up, because if you get back up again, you run the risk of falling again. And sometimes, you don’t think you’ll make it out alive unless you stop and just step away from it all.
While I absolutely believe God made us for seasons of rest and that Jesus does, indeed, dwell in the slow, unrushed rhythms of life, I also believe that God never ever wants us to stay down in that shame and revel in that rejection, because in order to get back up again, you must first have started upwards, otherwise you would naturally fall back into that knocked down stage. As image bearers of the Creator of the Cosmos, we are called to stand proudly as God made us to be; your heart is too beautiful to be left lying in the dirt. But if we were made to wear a crown fit for royalty, why do so many humans live with their heads down and hearts drenched in sorrow? I believe that the answer lies in comfortability, but first, let me tell y’all a story that may help explain my method to the madness.
When I was a kid, I loved horses. Yes, I know the stereotype that most Midwest girls go through this phase, but my love was genuine, pure and strong. I longed to be an Olympic equestrian, flying through fields and leaping across streams like I had seen indigenous Americans do in my American girl doll books. After my dad refused to convert his tool shed into a stable, my parents enrolled me in horseback riding lessons at a local ranch. Elated, I threw myself wholeheartedly into this endeavor, drawing doodles of my horse, a magnificent white and gray speckled stallion named Tug, and religiously followed every breath of my instructor like a nun following her mother superior. Never in my life had I felt so proud, so confident, so fearless as I was when I was atop Tug. Sadly, as the old adage goes, nothing gold can stay. Despite my quick reaction that saved both me and Tug from further harm, a freak accident left us both shaken and our trust shattered, the frightened look in his eyes paralyzing me, horrifying me at the realization that someone else could jeopardize a beautiful thing I had with a thing I loved so deeply. That was ten years ago; I haven’t seen Tug since.
Now, I’m sure y’all are wondering what my horse tale has to do with comfortability, but it’s actually the core of that fear: I had gotten knocked down, made to feel, both by my parents’ obsessive worrying and what had actually happened in that barn, like I didn’t have what it took to be a good rider, even though I was the one who saved us both. The trauma of the situation, thus, created a new narrative for me that told me I wasn’t good enough, that told me I wasn’t strong enough to handle it all, and that I might as well stay knocked down, for it’s better to live peacefully on your knees than to fear for your life on your own two feet. This new narrative became my new normal, and while it wasn’t healthy, I adapted to the dysfunction, the very dysfunction that Jesus came to set me free of. Jesus died the slave’s death so that I didn’t have to; Jesus suffered the social death of dysfunction so that I might live the way I was always intended to: manumitted. Set free, indeed. And the same goes for you, too, my friend. You were made to live unashamed of what you did not choose, liberated from the enslavement of our past mistakes and regrets. You were made to live life fully, on no one else’s terms but your own.
So how do we do this? How do we live manumitted? We try again. We begin again. We get back up again, and in that response, we reset the narrative.
My father’s best friend owns a horse farm with his wife and daughter. Last summer, I had reached out to his wife and asked her if I could come out and ride their horses for a day, despite the fact that I hadn’t ridden in nearly a decade and was still slightly terrified of getting hurt, both physically and mentally. Without hesitation though, she accepted. And never in my life have I been so in awe of God’s creations, from the softness of a newborn foul’s coat to the lush greenery of the trees against a pale blue sky. Never in my life have I felt so free atop my dusty copper stallion, Samson, as he munched on shrubs and soybeans and my body felt in tune with his while we rode deeper into the woods. And never in my life have I smiled so brightly as when we went splashing through the creek, the cool water splattering up onto my legs that hot August day, sending the gnats flying and soothing parts of my soul I didn’t even know were thirsty. Yes, I had my triggers, and yes I had my moments of fear, but they all fade to nothing when I look back at it all now. Like any injury sustained, healing hurts; that’s just the cold, hard truth of this life and of this world. And even still, God does Her best work in the hard spaces. So my prayer is that y’all find the courage to begin again, as well, cause God’s promises are always more than you can ever imagine; you just have to try again, and again, and again. And thus, we call that life; thus, we call that living.
Last Love 