II. The Limp

 “Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him.” - Genesis 32:25

Generally speaking, I’m too busy, too driven, and too focused to notice the things I don’t have (unless of course it’s in my face, like my printer isn’t working). I’m typically a pretty easygoing and contented person. However when my world stops swirling and I’m still and quiet, things slowly float to the surface. Repressed longings and yearnings start to ache, like the throbbing pain of a hammered thumb that keeps its victim awake at night. The things my heart so earnestly craves emerge in the absence of preoccupation, and I can’t help but sigh for the day I don’t feel the limp anymore. 

I deeply desire to marry (there, I said it). Why it’s always so difficult and painful to admit, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the vulnerability of being honest about a reality I can do little to change. Lord knows, whole books are written on the subject, so I have no need to belabour the many strategies for procuring a “happily ever after” here. But the ache to share my life and my heart with someone who is passionate and hard working has never gone away; despite the many stages and philosophies I’ve been through in life. Though I don’t feel desperate or hopeless, it just isn’t my reality yet. Which means for the present, there will be painful times. But don’t we all have that same pain in some way, shape or form? 

“Everyone wants something they don’t have. Everyone can point to a place in their life that feels like a barren wasteland. Even if someone was in their best season ever, and you handed them a microphone and asked, ‘What do you want that you don’t have,’ they’d still be able to give you an answer. Whether it’s a bigger house, or more job opportunities, or greater influence, or kids, or a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever—everyone I know wants something they don’t have. Don’t you? What do you want that you don’t have?” — Remember God, Annie F. Downs

At the end of 2019, I was browsing Koorong. Running my fingers along the book spines in the women’s section, my touch stopped on a book by Annie F. Downs. It was called “Remember God”. Intrigued by the title (and also the gorgeous binding. I will die a designer), I pulled it off the shelf and read the back. “I know God is loving; I know He is good; I believe He is big and powerful. But sometimes I wonder if He is really kind— really deeply always kind. Is He?” The question hit a chord way down inside me somewhere, as if I had just discovered a wound that I didn’t know I had. I bought the book, and one Saturday afternoon I sat on the verandah of our granny flat and read almost the entire thing in one sitting, ugly crying for most of it.

It was a story so similar to my own; longing for things, wanting to believe for them, being gut-wrenchingly disappointed, and picking up the pieces of hurt and trying not to put them back together in one big, cynical, jaded puzzle; all the while wondering what God’s kindness looks like (if it exists). Even down to the date, the book ended on an unresolved note on a New Year’s Eve - the same day of 2019. The timing of the book felt like both a smack in the face and oddly, a gift from God. 

“This darkest season marked me forever. It’s done a thing in me I can’t explain, except that I keep picturing what happens when a chunk of stone gets chipped out of a statue. It doesn’t ruin the statue, but it sure does change it permanently.  And that feels like me. I can’t pretend I didn’t stand out in the storm while my entire self got soaked and beat up. I can’t pretend my soul hasn’t been weathered. It has. I’m rougher for it. I’m chipped forever. I have a limp that will not heal.” — Annie F. Downs

I limped out of 2019. That year I suffered quite a few blows that left me nursing scars I wish I could forget. But after reading Annie’s book, my heart felt like a blank slate before God. 2020 launched me into a month of ministry and as I shelved my pain to serve, I could sense God writing, filling up the slate with new purpose, new direction. I was given the opportunity to serve on staff in a paid position in a ministry I deeply loved, and I forged against my insecurities and fears to say yes to it. I had a whole new world opened to me with new colleagues and friends, challenges and lessons; new territory in my life that I had only dreamed would happen. In so many places of naivety, uncertainty, and self doubt, God showed Himself so immensely faithful, reminding me just how little I can do without Him.

Throwing myself into work I adore, and embracing new challenges made it easy to forget my limp. Almost. It’s still there. Sometimes I lay awake at night and just… wonder. In some ways, it’s startlingly clear to me how God’s hand has miraculously directed my life and caused me to arrive in this ministry position. But there are other threads that end in question marks. “What the heck was that friendship even for? What was the whole point of that experience? Why do I still ache for a someone when I know God is enough?” I know God is good and faithful to direct me and my gifts to a place where He knows they will operate best. But kind…? I wonder to myself. Is it heresy to even voice the thought, “Will I only truly believe God is kind if I see Him grant my heart’s fondest desire?” And if He doesn’t, then what? Is there more to this itch I’m not paying attention to?

Lately I’ve been nannying for my brother and sister-in-law until their new baby comes. I spend most of my time with their two girls under three, watching them play, argue, and eat. As I watch them, I've found memories coming back to me. I remember being their age. Watching my little niece stick her head outside the pram just to watch the wheel go round, I remember. I remember certain types of grass that I made toy meals out of, or used as string to tie teepee sticks together with. I remember songs I sang, or games I made up. I remember how I saw the world, and even now, I can feel tears welling up just at the thought of how bright and beautiful everything was to that curly-haired little girl who thought she would grow up to be a princess who lived in the Disney castle. What on earth is wrong with me? 

I can feel bitterness rise in me as I recall who she was. I almost resent her, for her good and easy life. On a staff development retreat early in the year, we were asked to draw a timeline of our life and label the different seasons we experienced. I called my childhood “Innocence”. While my growing up years weren’t perfect, they were marked by an idyllic innocence that led me to see the world more like a story that ended with smiles and rainbows rather than the pain and confusion I’ve so often found. “Liar,” I think to myself now. “How dare you have such a wonderful childhood to believe in when the world is so different from what you think it is.” I feel almost conned by that younger me; to have believed her perspective of the world, and now after living in it for a while, finding it wanting in so many ways. Yet how quickly shame arrives on the heels of these honest thoughts. “How ungrateful you are,” it hisses. “How much worse so many others have had it, and you regret the blessing God gave you?”

“And it was good, good, good / now it’s gone, gone, gone / and there’s a little boy who’s lost out in the woods always looking for the fawn / So come back to me, please come back to me / is there any way we can change the ending of this tragedy?  Or does it have to be this way?” — Andrew Peterson

In the midst of these hurts coming to the surface that I didn’t even realise were there, something about Andrew Peterson’s “Light For the Lost Boy” album had been pushing its way into my heart. I’d known most of the songs on that record for years, and yet I found myself listening to it on repeat; aching, limping, moaning inside myself as I listened through the lyrics. Songs I had first heard years ago and didn’t “get” or like, I was now hanging on every word. I looked up stories behind the songs, video journals on YouTube about the album, and as I did, I stumbled across the artist speaking these words:

"This album at its heart is about the loss of innocence that we all go through. The fact that it's a universal experience. Everyone, I think, has inside of them a ten-year-old version of themselves who lives in their heart and is looking around wondering what went wrong.”

I cried. It still makes me cry. I feel as though the adult shell of who I’ve become is grieved and angry over how broken and messed up this world I’ve woken up in is, yet it still houses that ten-year-old version of myself; the kid in the dirty shirt, messy hair she’d barely brushed in a week because she was too busy playing in the sun and relishing in her fantastic imaginings, her; she’s hidden inside, wondering why we’re limping now. Wondering how we got here. Wondering why it doesn’t look like we thought it would. Such a huge part of my wrestling has been with myself: adult me, hurt and angry, blaming younger me for selling me a lie, but at the same time, wishing with all my heart I could go back and be her again, even for a day. To forget. To be unmade, and untarnished, and unhurt. To be free. To believe like she did. To see everything sad become untrue. 

Maybe that’s why I limp; why we all limp. See, maybe I’ll get married, and maybe I won’t. But the limp won’t go away. We were made for an eternity of good things, for true love, for a world that doesn’t die. Walking along the road one day this Autumn in the clear blue sky, the gorgeous warmth of the afternoon sun, the fields green from the prayed-for rain, I looked down and noticed a wren dead on the side of the road. There it was again, a stinging blow to my soul. Perfection doesn’t exist, but I crave it. I yearn for it. Every fiber of me was made for it, and I don’t see it. Death and pain and unmet craving and loss of innocence isn’t what I was made for. None of us were made for this. I need something more. Not to go back to ten year old me, but to go on to eternal me, where nothing will ever die again. At home in the Presence of God. My heart is restless till it finds its rest in Thee. I will be restless, yearning, limping and hurting until the day I die. No marriage, no higher calling, no ministry, no miracle, no desire met on earth will slake the eternity in my soul that this mortal world cannot satisfy. 

But there is God’s grace, His mercy, His undying faithfulness and love abundant here. Maybe it truly is His kindness to give a limp at times. If I were truly satisfied here, in Him, would I look forward to that day? More than likely not. Would we even need to see Him face to face if a life of faith on earth was enough? We wouldn’t. Maybe if I didn’t limp in some way, I wouldn’t know how much I need Him.

“When the struggle is over, Jacob is left with a limp that - as far as we know—never went away. He wanted a blessing, and he got a limp. Or maybe the limp was his blessing. “ — John Ortberg

I wonder if that’s why Jacob limped. It may have healed, and he may have got along just fine in time. But maybe that wrestling with God—that tenacity of spirit that writhed and struggled with God Himself to get a blessing—maybe there was a lesson wrapped up in that somewhere which God didn’t want Jacob to forget. Sure, he got his blessing— a new name—but he got a limp as well. I wonder if every time he took a step he remembered where he got it, and who gave it to Him? What lessons would he have recalled because of it? 2019 hurt me bad enough that things changed inside of me. I no longer approach people or circumstances in the same way, with the same lens that I used to look through. That me is gone, much like Jacob was gone and Israel remained. While I don’t think God is an inflicter of punishment or pain, I do think He can use those things to open cracks in our heart for Him to pour His healing Spirit into; cleansing us, redirecting us, changing us into something new. How many new names will we receive in this lifetime, I wonder? How many versions of ourselves will die, and will we bury and mourn at the graves of before our final death, where we rise again to the only name we will ever have for the rest of eternity? (Rev. 2:17)

So I will drag a leg for the rest of my time here. It may heal somewhat, but there will always be a numb patch, or a cramp to remind me not to get comfortable here. But maybe there are ways adult me can learn from younger me. Younger me reminds me that good things do exist. The limp is a kindness, reminding me of them. That’s why it hurts so bad. It has to be truly good if the lack of it hurts so. Younger me can take adult me by the hand and lead me back to the Source of that goodness. The idyllic childhood, and the rose-coloured glasses I looked through? It wasn’t naivety or idealism. It was eternity. Maybe children can see better than adults. I know the only reason I’m bitter or resentful now is because I want what younger me had. And I will, someday. Ten year old me will help me get there. 

After all, didn’t Jesus Himself say we must come as a child?

And a child wouldn’t let a limp stop them, they just come.

Maybe that’s just another way God is kind. 

He came first.

Come back soon, Lord Jesus. I miss you. 

“And it hurts so bad / but it's so good to be young / and I don't want to go back / I just want to go on and on and on / So don't lose heart, though your body's wasting away / Your soul is not, it's being remade / So don't lose heart, don't lose heart / your body will rise and never decay / day by day by day.” — Andrew Peterson

"He answered me, 'I am all you need. I give you My loving-favor. My power works best in weak people.' I am happy to be weak and have troubles so I can have Christ’s power in me." — 2 Corinthians 12:9 NLV