Limping Out: Requiem Well Almost #1

Yesterday was exactly 4 months to the day since I about killed myself hiking.

 

I would like to say I am fully healed and that all is normal. Spiritually speaking I have been fully healed since that day. As I said before the presence of God was so clear in the hours following my accident that I knew I was healed. Funny thing though my ankle did not get the memo. The first six weeks were difficult to say the least. Somewhere around 10 weeks I realized I was “almost” normal again. This despite all my wise friends and colleagues saying it might never heal fully. Yeah thanks I would say.  I started working out in week 10 and have been doing so now for 6 weeks. I feel alive and strong. Energy levels climbing by the day. Still though my ankle did not get the memo. A missed placed step and a dull shooting pain was my reward. A stretch of a joint that just won’t go as far as it used to…

 

Throughout this ordeal I wanted to live the wisdom “if you fall get right back up and try again”. I desperately wanted to go back up the mountain and thank God for my deliverance. I wanted to run the dirt and rock through my hand in the spot I fell. I wanted to see the blood stains in the ground where I came to rest. I wanted to retrace my steps as God carried me out of that place. The desire to return was overwhelming. Only thing is I knew that I could not too early, I had to be fit and strong.

 

My wife and friends wanted me to take a friend, they wanted me to play it safe. Common sense sure, wise advice certainly, but is that the way of a real man? How could I go back into Gods country with a safety net?! No this was a journey I had to take alone.

 

I decided to ride my mountain bike up there this time. I had always wanted to do so in the past but was not fit enough for the cardio beating it took to do so. I have no friends capable of this ride and only a few acquaintances who could and they just would not get the significance of the ride so I rode it alone.

 

I got to within half a mile before I had to walk. Travelling off-road up a mountain trail for over five miles will wear you down like no other workout I know, it just never ends. As I approached the mound I was stunned. You see I had secretly begun to think I has exaggerated its size. No it could not have been over 40 feet high. It was higher, at least 60! It was not that steep, yes it was. I climbed that thing?!

 

I stared at it awestruck at how blessed I was to have been delivered from this. Even though I had returned to the spot I had fallen I felt this strange urge upward. Should I? You must, a voice inside me responded, closure awaits. So I climbed back up the slope I ran down just four months earlier. I got to the top and praised God for my deliverance, thanked him for his grace. Then I began to climb down.. again…

Father thank you

there are no words to describe the depth of my gratitude for what you did for me that day

Thank You

There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus

So where was this verse 5 years ago, 10, 20, 30 years ago?

When I needed it...

Where was the grace and acceptance of a forgiving loving God?

When I did not understand it…

Where was the healing from shame and self condemnation?

When the pain was too much to bear…

Where was the humility of a life devoted to Christ?

When I knew nothing of it...

The answer to these questions have, for me, a similar answer; The answer lies hidden deep within the lies and deception of the enemy. For years I lived in the insanity of what most men go through. I lived in the constant struggle of good behavior followed by failure then condemnation, guilt, remorse, confession. Each time through the cycle was as if on a downward spiral staircase stuck acting as a descending escalator. You simply cannot win, every stumble takes you further away from the love and forgiveness of Christ. The failures pile up one upon another. You feel like a train wreck. Each car scattered all over the ground one upon another in a tangled mess of steel broken glass, broken flesh and heart ache.

I lived this pattern most of my formative years and adult life. Although a lifelong believer, I fell victim to the schemes of the devil so easily I look back on it with embarrassment. I feel like a cow being led to the slaughter house.

Why do we as men live in this pain for so long? How can we be released from this bondage?

Unfortunately we live compartmentalized lives. We live in secret. We think we cannot share our pain, our desperation, our desolation. We think that our identity is at risk; our very manhood will be undercut if we confess to another brother the struggle for life we engage in every day. The lie of pride, the lie of ego, the lie of shame all clever deceptions of an enemy who never sleeps.

We see a racy commercial on television and Victoria Secret models assault our thought life. Before we know it we are in death thinking things no man has a right to.

We see a shiny new Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, fill in the blank and we lust after the sleek lines, the precision engineering. We imagine what it must be like to drive such a fine automobile. We start to attack the driver. How can they have it if I cannot?! We swell up with pride at how we will be perceived behind the wheel.

We take one more drink (drug, fill in the blank) to dull the pain of profound loneliness of meaninglessness. We know we should not but we do, just one more we rationalize I can handle it.

Can you?!! Really!! I think not.

My heart is broken today and I believe it will stay that way until my Lord and savior gives me a new one. I too still fall victim to these traps but Praise God the frequency has lessened and the condemnation is gone. I have been given a gift of knowledge that the struggles I have had have been of the flesh and not of my soul. My struggles are sure to be with me for the days to come, yet the consequences of failure are so totally different.

Christ loves me, he knew me before I was born, and he has a plan for me. I take such comfort in this and know that through him all things are possible. Through him I can be a difference maker, through him I can help the Kingdom grow. I can be his hands, his feet. May his will be done on earth.

There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus

Amen

If I am saved by grace, why do I still sin?

Sin

If I am saved by grace, why do I still sin?

Father, forgive me for I have sinned…

As a child I must have started this prayer of contrition a thousand times, usually with a Priest on the other side of a veiled confessional. I grew up this way, telling a Priest what I had done wrong, receiving prayers and acts of penance. Each time, while I felt intellectually freer, I never felt clean never felt washed in Christ’s gift of grace.

Why was that?

I think at the root of the problem is the conflict of my carnal and spiritual natures. In my heart and soul I hate sin. Yet as a human I seem to be unable to escape my carnal nature. Each time I sin I beg forgiveness I claim my inheritance in Christ, his grace and resolve to turn away to repent from those acts which separate me from him.

Create in me a clean heart Oh God and renew my spirit

Deep within me I know that Christ is doing a work in me. He is transforming me. One day I hope to be changed enough that I will begin to reflect his glory and not my small self. I see my heart and it is stained black with sin, but through the cross these stains are being moved toward the edges dissipating, lessening. One day the darkness of the edges will be all that is left, another day I will have a clean heart, a heart totally committed and devoted to God. The darkness inside will be brought to the light. While the darkness tries to hide, it will fail. All will be made light. God please speed up your work on my heart I am so tired of failing.

I find some solace in the book of Romans, particularly the end of chapter 7 and the start of 8. I know deep in my soul that the answers to my struggles lie in these verses.

Romans 7: 15-25 8: 1-3
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

8:1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

I see in Paul’s words that I am not alone in this battle. Most importantly my stumbles are not fatal. As I have my hope and salvation in Christ Jesus my savior, I cannot be condemned. My salvation is a gift of grace through the resurrection of Christ. Here in lies my theology, I am not worthy of it, I cannot earn it, it was freely given to me out of a sacrifice of love.

Father deliver me
Wash me clean
Only your grace and love can cleanse me
I need you today more than ever
The battle rages but my hope is in you
That you will deliver me from this hell
That you will carry me through this
Father deliver me
I am before you in the dust
I am not worthy father
Heal me
Deliver me

In your sons victorious name I call on you to deliver me

Amen