The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Jeremiah 17:9
I shot a confirmatory look at my brother. He paused the 12 Rules for Life audiobook by Jordan Peterson playing on the car's Bluetooth. The author’s enthusiastic obsession with lobsters had served its purpose in previous miles, but extra noise was no longer helpful. Focus was required. This was life or death.
If you’ve ever played the board game, Operation, you understand what delicately navigating through West Virginia’s narrow country roads at night feels like—fearing the shock of what might happen if you touch the edges. The yellow-marked winding pavement with the whimsical elevation changes invalidate the car’s headlights. The oncoming traffic passing but inches away, alongside the tailgating pickup, peer pressuring you to maintain the racing speed limit, though social, doesn’t comfort.
The decision to make the twelve-hour drive from college to surprise our parents for Thanksgiving made less sense now. Somehow during the planning stage, we had overlooked that neither of us had driven more than three hours in one sitting, let alone in a stick shift. We were strangely just as green as the forest around us. However, something about West Virginia’s unexpected winding, bipolar elevation, and inability to see was not new to us.
No home, no stability, no belonging, a normal life for a third culture kid. Countries were pit stops, houses were tents, and friends were heartbreaks. Citizenship and passports were just words on paper and cultural identity was a family joke. Like a dog, pulled away from fellow canines, our necks were sore from being dragged behind God’s will for our family. The adventures of living around the world, though adrenaline-filled, left us thirsting for stability.
Jerking shifts in direction left bruises and the fog of an unreliable future strained our squinting eyes. To save myself from the aches of moving, I simplified logic, ascribing pain to people, safety to solitude, and emotion to change. But amidst the repeated packing I accidently stuffed God in the emotion-box and as a result, associated His nature with change.
Mistakes, like our capricious life, brought on stinging emotions. When I sinned, not only did I disdain myself, but God did too. Slipping up meant grief and in turn, a change in God’s grace. I could not comprehend the idea of a constant within change and so I let my theology form into an ugly lie. But it was just that—a lie.
It is easy to associate our situations, actions, and problems with how God sees us because of the feelings that follow. Even the most stable experience the erratic nature of emotions. Because of this, the world’s fixation on reality as what we feel affects not only how we understand love, but how we think God loves. When we don’t understand, we can feel things about God. But how we feel does not affect who God is.
The good news truly is that because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have a constant on whom we can rest our eyes. The world and the things in the world are like an ocean that crashes back and forth. When we grab onto Jesus we are no longer tossed wildly by waves. Though the water may still roll over our physical bodies, our position is secure. Regardless of how faithless, alone, or unloved we may feel, God is faithful, present, and in love with us nonetheless.
I clenched my hands on the wheel and glued my eyes to the road. I imagined my brother and I at home surprising our family, wishing we could skip the current ordeal. My heart cast pebbles of doubt and pictures of death at me. But like stone against steel, they were shrugged off. I felt afraid, but I was confident of one thing. God was driving us safely home that night.
Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Isaiah 50:10
…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2
Really amazing post.