I am sad today, hot tears threatening to spill out. My friend shared this song with me earlier, which brought me right to the edge. Over the past few years, my life and my faith have been upended. The carefully constructed ramparts of my faith once allowed me to observe pain and suffering from a safe distance, but I did not know that I had built everything on shifting sand and when everything collapsed, I wandered about in a daze trying to understand how the broken pieces fit together.
In his severe mercy, God has been patiently revealing the reality of suffering, not every day, but in doses I can (barely) handle. Suffering is a universal phenomenon, but I feel its sharp bite most exquisitely when I am brought face to face with the pain I have caused to others, often under the banner of righteousness. I have twisted the truth, betrayed friends, and misused both professional and spiritual position in service to unholy ends and it tears me up inside.
Most days, if I think about who I was becoming, I still question whether I am trustworthy. How can I now claim to live with integrity when my words and actions had become so dis-integrating? How can I be certain that I am not still deluded, unloving, abusive? Maybe someday I will know the answers to those questions, but not today. For now, I will continue to press into my discomfort, seeking to know myself and live from a place of love.
As I thought about betrayal today, I was reminded of my favorite movie, Braveheart. I identify with Robert the Bruce, the presumptive leader of Scotland, who utterly betrayed William Wallace in pursuit of power and position.
Jason Kanz 