To Make A Life
Vincent Van Gogh, Garden of the Hospital in Arles, 1889
Ann Voscamp prays an honest prayer in her extraordinary new book Waymaker. In this scene, she is confined to a hospital bed, the result of unexpected heart failure. The situation is alarming for her. In the stillness of the moment, she talks honestly to her God:
Maybe, in some ways, I don’t really trust Your ways—don’t trust Your ways to take care of me, don’t trust Your ways to grow my joy large because Your ways aren’t just higher than ours; sometimes Your ways seem [to] take us down a road of suffering.
And then, after what feels like a long pause, she concludes: “The soul’s greatest lack is lacking confidence in God.” Is it possible to trust anyone anymore, even God?
We can listen to all the promises, and yet, we question whether we trust those promises, really trust enough to let go, surrender our constant need to make things right, by ourselves. We can hear the promise of Jesus that he will bring complete joy, all the while we scramble and fuss and fret to make our own joy. We see the promise of God’s abundant love, when the Father welcomes his prodigal son with open, loving arms, that same son who has been wandering in a far country trying to make his own satisfaction. As we close this remarkable story, we’re still not sure we are loved. We hear the promise of Jesus when he says, so-simply, no strings attached, “peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. . . . Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” And yet, our hearts are troubled, we are not at peace, relentlessly struggling to create a place of rest for ourselves.
I’ve been thinking trust is not something that comes easily in our day. We are plagued with mistrust. Nothing feels true or right or above self-aggrandizement. We don’t trust because there is so much betrayal going on, so little loyalty, so little love, so much hatred. How do we come away from being thrown under the bus and feel like trusting anyone anymore?
But, still, I’ve been asking myself: What if we really could trust these promises of Jesus, really trust that we will be welcomed home into the arms of a loving God, really trust that God cares deeply for you and me, cares for all of his children, cares for the world that swirls out of control. What if it’s not up to us? Can we learn this kind of trust? Can we let go of our relentlessly obsessive selves?
“Lying there under a thin hospital sheet in the dimmed room,” Voscamp finds herself reflecting deeply on the failures of her life, when she has frantically tried to go it alone, tried to solve everything for herself and her family, tried to place herself, on her own, back into the arms of God. For all her remarkable faith, and her equally remarkable articulation of that faith, she comes to realize that she has not trusted the promises she has talked about so often.
She concludes, in this poignant moment in the hospital, that “stillness” is the answer for us. This is startling. What can she mean?
By stillness, sense is made of things. By stillness, the roar of the enemy is stilled, and the soul can listen to the whisper of its Maker. You have to make time to be still—in order to make a life. Why had I needed a literal heart failure to find a long, long stretch of clarifying stillness? Had I needed to fall into heart failure so my actual life wouldn’t fail?
She is talking here about the practice of prayer. In daily prayer we enter a place that is still like no other. Our yearning hearts can become still, our chattering minds quiet, our ego-driven need to make better lives and a better world begin to take the back seat. We come to see, really see, that God is ready “to make a life” for us. It takes discipline to get to this point—“you have to make time to be still.” But to be still in this way is to learn to trust that God really does care for us, that joy really can be ours, that peace is possible.
I yearn for this stillness, when we see, maybe for the first time, that we are not ultimately self-sufficient, that God waits until we have grown still. The promise here is that he will visit us in this stillness, ready to bring rest and peace and joy. Can we trust this promise in a world with so little trust?
Oh my, teach me, Lord, how to be still. Teach me how to trust in your promises. Help me to allow you to make a life for me and for my world.