Thin Air, High Hope

I have a failure in my life that is on replay. It is one of those moments that lay bare your character and leave you without defense regarding who you truly are.

I was in my early twenties and at my Grandma’s home for the weekend. Grandma had been my rock, my safe place throughout my life. She was the kind of person who accepted where and who you were without judgment. Everyone who knew her loved her. She was kind, incredibly funny, and took a sincere interest in those around her. The woman’s cooking was something otherworldly, and she was always making someone’s favorite dish or dessert. She was feisty and loyal, wise and insightful, and an incredibly competitive card player. I loved her deeply. I still love her deeply.

This particular visit was short and heavy. She was being admitted into a nursing home, and her health was not doing well. Her heart and lungs were failing. We had gone through some of her things, played a game or two of cards, and watched some Wheel of Fortune. That night, we went to sleep, her in her room and me on the couch. I had to get up at 4 a.m. the next morning to make it back home in time for work, a seven-hour drive.

Around 2 a.m., I heard Grandma rummaging around in the kitchen. This was unlike her. I had spent more nights on her couch than I can count, and she always slept through the night. I was irritated by the interruption and asked her what she was doing. She said she couldn’t sleep. I didn’t say much because I was focused on the day ahead and what it would require.

As she continued to make noise and move things around in the kitchen, I asked her again what she was doing. This time, in a low tone with tears in her voice, she said, “I’m scared.”

I would love to say here that I got up, that I embraced her, that I reassured her she was going to be okay. I would love to say I did a thousand other things than I did in that moment. Instead, to this woman who had stood by my side in my absolute darkest moments, I only felt frustration and impatience. I needed to sleep. I don’t even remember how I replied. I only remember that it was flippant and dismissive, and she was quiet and went back to bed.

I saw her once more after that. I visited her in the nursing home shortly before she passed. She was so peaceful and beautiful. She was happy. Somehow, I believe God took care of her heart and gave her comfort. But that comfort wasn’t from me.

This memory comes back at the strangest moments: at a stoplight, making brownies, walking along a path. It hits hard and painful and honest. It reminds me of who I am at my core. And it hurts. It hurts that I did not show up for this woman I loved so much. I don’t know how heaven works, but I usually find myself talking with her in those moments. I believe she would forgive me. I believe in that moment she forgave me. But it revealed to me the darkness of my heart in a clear way that I will never forget. And I will never stop regretting missing that opportunity to love someone who loved me so much.

Why am I writing about this?

I don’t write this to berate myself. I don’t share this memory for pity or reassurance. I honestly don’t even write for anyone to read this. I wanted to write this one for myself. 

This morning, as I continued through my current book, Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning, he discussed the stark, raving honesty required for humility. Manning is a recovering alcoholic and describes recovery in this way:

“Recovery from the disease cannot be initiated until the deadly denial dwelling in the subterranean personality of the drunk is exposed and acknowledged…. Similarly, we cannot receive what the crucified Rabbi has to give until we admit our plight and stretch out our hands until our arms ache.”

And while this is a painful memory, it reminds me of who I am. I could say I was tired, I was young, that I was under my own stress. But I believe it was more a case of what C.S. Lewis so powerfully describes in this excerpt:

“On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in the cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”

It is relatively easy to be kind and selfless when the situation is something anticipated. It is in the moments, the 2 a.m. moments of fatigue and selfishness, that true characters are revealed. We even see that with the three closest friends of Jesus, as they also slept through His most troubled moments in the garden.

I find an impostor present within me: someone who wants to live up to appearances, who is often driven by good intentions, but then tainted with posturing and people-pleasing. One who, when the lights are turned on suddenly, is more prone to think of herself and her immediate needs than to give selflessly to those around her.

As I reflect upon these truths and this memory, my initial impulse is to feel guilt. But as I sit before Jesus in all of my mess, I don’t find condemnation. As I bring to Him my posturing and my selfishness, my dark places and weakness, I find immense comfort in being fully known and yet fully loved.

Manning explores this in his own life as he shares:

“Only in a relationship of the deepest intimacy can we allow another person to know us as we truly are. It is difficult enough for us to live with the awareness of our stinginess and shallowness, our anxieties and infidelities, but to disclose our dark secrets to another is intolerably risky.
The impostor does not want to come out of hiding. He will grab for the cosmetic kit and put on his pretty face to make himself ‘presentable.’
Whom can I level with? To whom can I bare my soul? Whom dare I tell that I am benevolent and malevolent; chaste and randy; compassionate and vindictive; selfless and selfish; that beneath my brave words lives a frightened child… that I have blackened a friend’s character, betrayed a trust, violated a confidence; that I am tolerant and thoughtful, a bigot and a blowhard, and that I really hate okra?
The greatest fear of all is that if I expose the impostor and lay bare my true self, I will be abandoned by my friends and ridiculed by my enemies.
…Our obsession with privacy is rooted in the fear of rejection. If we sense nonacceptance, we cannot lay down the burden of sin; we can only shift the heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. Likewise, we can only lay bare our sinful hearts when we are certain of receiving forgiveness.”

In order to feel fully loved, we need full acceptance. We need this acceptance in all of who we are: our greatest strength, our greatest weakness, and the apathy and complacency in between. This is what I have found in Jesus. He showed compassion to both the tax collector and the Pharisee, the prodigal and the faithful son.

“The gospel confession of sin is the most generous, secure, adventurous expression of the human heart. It is the risk that is only taken in the certainty of being acceptable and accepted. It is the full and final expression of that confidence. Only to your lover do you expose your worst.
To an amazed world Jesus presents a God who calls for this confession only so that He may reveal Himself in a person’s depths as His lover. This confession in a context of divine acceptance releases the deepest energies of the human spirit and constitutes the gospel revolution in its essence.”

As I live in the truth of who I am, in my unresolved regrets and in my present faith, I find myself utterly captivated, deeply embraced, and unconditionally loved by God. I’ve learned that we can only lay bare our sinful hearts when we are certain of receiving forgiveness. And I am.

That certainty allows me to return to the 2 a.m. moment, not to undo it, but to face it. It still defines part of me. It still reveals something I wish weren’t true. But now, it also reveals something greater: that even there, I am not beyond grace.

And in that, there is peace. Not peace from forgetting, but peace from being fully known, fully forgiven, and still fully loved.

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Hebrews 4:16