Disorientation

In every Christian's life, there are cyclical seasons: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. I guess you can think of the first as a season where you first encounter Christ and everything around you seems to pulsate with joy and life. You experience what freedom from sin looks like. You marvel at how the love of Christ can hit your heart so hard and fill the deep ache inside you that you realized has been inside you all of this time. You see yourself through the lens and eyes of Christ, as someone who is innately worthy and deeply beloved.

Ah, if only we could stay in this season of orientation. But alas, we live in a broken and fallen world and we ourselves are broken and fallen creatures. Thus, seasons of disorientation are - on this side of heaven - to be expected. Fogginess. Confusion and doubt. The burden of sin and the experience of receiving and inflicting pain. Prayers that are unanswered. All this and more can characterize seasons of disorientation and give rise to questions like "Where are you, God?" and "What in the world are you doing?" To be frank, I am in a season of disorientation. I feel the heaviness of unanswered prayers that reaches far back into the past and the lethargy of not knowing what the future holds. I feel the present tension and discomfort of not being completely satisfied. I can distract myself, but in the end, must acknowledge face-on that I still feel empty.

Just as seasons of orientation cannot last forever, seasons of disorientation have the power to be spaces where we experience our need for God in the valley. It is in this space that I am fully dependent on him to meet me and reorient me back to him. I can trust that he will do so, because he has done it for me in the past. Right. He was with me when my dad walked out when I was a year old and when my sister was victim to trauma; he was with me when as a small kid I came home from school to a dark and empty house; he was with me when I experienced disappointment after disappointment in my relationship with my dad during my teenage years/early twenties; he was with me when I experienced depression at Wheaton College; he was with me when I experienced severe depressive disorder and suicidal ideation in 2016. He was with me.

And I know you still are. And I know that I would rather utter prayers that have the word 'with' instead of 'for'. Pastor Peter preached on this entire post yesterday at church and I appreciated the reminder that prayers that have the word 'for' usually result in disappointment in God. God, I'm waiting for this and that and why aren't you moving and why aren't you answering my prayers?  I'm reminded that incorporating the word 'with' can be a powerful shift that allows God to make himself known even in the gloomiest of seasons. Because let's be real, the presence of God in even the darkest of seasons can be a powerful experience that changes you and cultivates faith and intimacy. So, God, walk with me in this season; be with me; show me who you are.