Mid-air

Wendell Loewen, Tabor College professor and founder of the ministry program Faith Front, tells a humorous story of a time when the ‘old guy’ was going to give the zip line a shot in front of the youth. It was the kind where you stepped off of a ledge holding on to the trapeze-type bar that kept you attached to the line. You’d zip out across the water and let go to drop into the pond. Once Wendell was up on the ledge ready to reach out and grab the bar, it seemed the bar was just a little too far away. He held on to the ledge and stretched out one arm to try and reach it and leaned out on his toes, but he still couldn’t reach it. When he tells the story, you’re right there with him in the reaching and straining when he makes the conclusion that he was only going to grab hold of the bar if his feet left the ledge to which he was clinging. He would have to jump. Wendell is the master of connecting real-life stories and experiences with deeper meaning and piercing truths about what it is to follow Jesus. When he tells stories like this one, he draws you into it so well that when he gets to the punch line, “Sometimes faith is like that,” you’re nodding along as if you had always known that is where he was going with it. 

 

I have thought of that story more times than I can recall over the last few months. It’s left me with a big question: what do you do when the leap isn’t a short-hop-and-a-stretch, but a several-months-long-hover?

What I mean is this: In situations like Wendell’s story, you take the jump and you know in seconds whether you’ve totally botched it or not. But in life, sometimes the jump is such a risk you can’t even SEE the bar you’re reaching for. The analogy is still golden. Sometimes in order to grab hold of what God has for us—God’s best for us—we have to let go of other things, even good things.

Still… it’s ‘easier’ to let go when you know what you’re grabbing a hold of, when you can at least SEE what is out there to jump for.  And sometimes, that’s how it works… but not always.

I’ve been thinking about Wendell’s story and asking that question in my mind because it feels like Lee & I are in that leap. We are caught somewhere in mid-air. Which is super cool in photographs and less award-winning when it’s your life. 

After I resigned from my job as a youth pastor and we prepared to move, I got a lot of questions from people trying to make sense of ‘what they had heard’ since they hadn’t seen anything about it on facebook. It’s pretty typical these days to make life-change announcements on social media. It saves a lot of time explaining things over and over. But I could never do it, because I couldn’t explain it. 

Lee and I resigned from our jobs and made plans to move to another city without having jobs there, because we had heard a gentle but consistent whisper in our hearts, “It’s time.” We knew in our spirits that it was time for me to start seminary and that it was time for a change for our family, a different pace, a different path. And for whatever reason—still unknown to us—God was calling us to move to the Kansas City area even though the logistics hadn’t lined up yet. It felt like a friend hollering to you in a crowded place, “I’m over here. Just come towards my voice.” You’ve got the general idea and it’s enough to go on. That’s where we were at when we packed up our lives and let go of what had been so secure, so certain, so reliable. 

We leaped. 

And while we wait to see the specifics of what God has in store for us in ways of provision and plan (all another blog), I’ve been learning on the fly what you do when the leap of faith is not a sweeping rush of adrenaline met quickly by a the resolution of hands grasped firmly on the bar that carries you to the next thing, but rather an extended hover in the unknown of neither here nor there. 

And what I’ve learned is you have two choices:   Grapple or Fix your gaze.

You can grapple and grasp for straws; looking for practical ways to brace yourself for the fall or a stray limb to grab hold of and change course. I know I’m grappling when my anxiety about the unknown pieces of our future leads me to hours-long internet searches about low-income housing and affordable apartments. I’m looking for ways to ‘fix’ our ‘predicament’.  I’m grappling when I spread our budget across an excel sheet for the 7^thtime and try to make more out of the little that’s coming in. I’m grappling when I start texting my inner circle about how hard and unsure it all is. The texts are basically cries of, ‘Help me figure out how to fix this!’ 

And get this: it never ‘fixes it’. I do it about every 2.5 weeks only to discover the same thing all over again. The question I need to ask myself in the mid-air limbo of the leap into the unknown is not how I’m going to find that ‘bar’ and grab hold of it, but rather do I trust The One who called me to actually be there?

Sometimes we leap for something we can see. It still requires faith that God will carry us when our feet leave the ground of where we’ve been and our fingertips reach for the place we’re going. Sometimes we leap into a foggy haze, following after a gentle voice that says, “Come to me. Don’t look back. Just follow my voice.” We don’t know where the bar is, it isn’t becoming any clearer as we thrust ourselves into the unknown, but at some point we believed it was out there, we believed in the promise of The One who calls, or our feet would have never left the ground. So, we can grapple if we want to, but if it fixes anything it will only be temporary.   Or  we can fix our gaze. 

It’s like Peter in Matthew 14, as the ghost-like figure of Jesus is seen walking out on the waves towards them in the fog. Peter calls out to his teacher, Jesus (v.28), “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.”

Peter is on the edge, he can barely make out Jesus through the fog and waves, but he’s ready if Jesus will just tell him to jump.  And he does.  But something happens. Oh, you’ve heard the story before. Peter gets down out of the boat and walks. on. water. But from his new water-level perspective he realizes just how big the waves are, just how small and fragile he is amidst them, and he becomes afraid. Fear rises up out of the waves like a morning mist and wraps around his ankles, pulling him under.

I imagine that he looked at the waves once, then back to Jesus, then back to the waves. That's when his feet started sinking. I picture his eyes widening as he swallowed hard and frantically looked for the boat or for a limb (in the middle of the sea?!). As he sank further, the fear grew worse. Maybe his arms flailed and his legs kicked, but then he snaps his head back in the direction of Jesus, locks eyes on him and cries out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately, Jesus reaches out his hand and catches Peter (v.31). 

Jesus catches Peter.

Peter’s attention was stolen by the waves. And this same thing happens to us… to me… My attention gets stolen by the things that tell me they’re bigger than me, the things that threaten to sweep over me when I’ve made myself vulnerable on the way towards what Jesus has for me. But just as everything seemed lost, when he was likely most tempted to grapple for something to aid him in the struggle, Peter recalibrated his attention and fixed his gaze on The One who called him.   And The One who called him, caught him. 

There are so many things I can’t figure out right now. I don’t know how or when Lee’s job will bring in enough money for us to live on here, or when Lee and I will have insurance again, or where/when we are going to find an apartment or home. I don’t know if our kids will have to switch schools midyear or if we made some huge miscalculation when we plunged over the edge of what used-to-be. Don’t feel sorry for us, God has more than taken care of us so far, but I’d be lying to say we don’t get a bit stressed at times, a tad anxious and afraid. But the reality is that I’m certain, with blurry vision or grappling hands, that if we fix our gaze on The One who calls, he’ll rescue us. Not just once, but 100x over. 

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

If you could watch it up close, this season of our lives is not some Pulitzer prize winning still frame of a straight leg leap through the clouds over a ravine as our feet leave the ground from that ledge we were comfortable on and our arms stretch out for the bar that will carry us out over the gorgeous waters of abundant life where we will gracefully let go and do an olympic style dive into the clear lake below. Instead, it looks more like a slow-motion tumble through the air as our arms and legs occasionally flail in desperation before re-fixing our gaze on The One who is calling us to where we’re going, The One who will reach out and catch our hands even when we can't see his. And where are we going? Great question. Wherever The Voice calls from, that’s where.   You hear that? Yeah, that’s the direction we’re heading… we think.