For the last month I’ve been engaging in the various phases of a collosal flail. I didn’t even know before that there were stages to flailing, but it was initiated by grief and there are stages to that, so maybe that’s why. 

When my beloved seagulls were displaced so casually from the roof across from ours, it triggered me in emotional ways I still don’t fully comprehend. I do know that watching their annual cycles had become a major way by which I measured the progression of my life. Their schedule was dependable in a chaotic world. I’d also come to think of them as a connection between God and myself. Their welfare had been previously threatened and I’d cursed and prayed helplessly from my window. Time and again they were spared and I began to think that perhaps God actually cared about things that I care about. 

When they were ousted my entire confidence in that single, seemingly tangible connection was lost. I know it sounds silly.  I guess it is, really, but it was my experience, just the same. I became uncertain of anything I’d been certain of, which wasn’t very much in the first place. I’d already been questioning many of my prior beliefs and reforming my thoughts on life and reality. 

I was reminded this week, however, that I’m still certain of a handful of things that hold great significance to me. I’m still certain of the central importance of love, mercy, justice, and humility. I’ve also been reminded of the presence in my life of a couple relationships through which I’ve been given comfort and wisdom in quite fatherly ways. They are healthy relationships with caring men who actually want me to talk with them.  I choose to believe that this is God reaching out to me in a healing way. 

I think I’ve often measured my own relationship with God by comparing it with what I’ve seen of God’s interactions with other people. Their communication has seemed so intimate that at times I’ve been jealous, feeling shut out once again from having an emotional bond with any kind of father. I’ve prayed, begged, repented, waited, gotten prayer, tried not to try so hard, and continued to worship God even though he’s seemed far away and inaccessible. I’ve chosen to believe even against my own sense of judgment and good sense, because despite myself I cannot escape the desire for connection with him. 

A few comforting thoughts have slowly risen to the top this week as I’ve continued to flail. I already mentioned some helpful relationships. Every time I lie down on the chiropractor’s table I feel the gift of comfort and am reminded to open my heart and receive it. When I am able to talk through my quandaries with my therapist I’m reminded that I’m not alone in my journey to figure out how to live. When I teach I’m reminded that there is no one perfect way to think. There is no perfect perspective of God because the best of us see through the filters of our own knowledge and experience. Each of us is allowed and even expected to have our own thoughts or we’d not have been made with free will. I’ve even considered that the mixture of love and grief with which I view the world in its brokenness may be something I have in common with God, which would mean that he and I really may care about some of the same things. If he is kind in the all-encompassing, galaxy-rocking way that I hope he is, then he cares about every single creature with more clarity and insight than I will ever have. 

I’m still a big jumbled mess when it comes to my thoughts about the Bible and how much God is really involved in our daily lives. At least, however, I haven’t been left alone to both figure it out and let it go. A certain amount of mystery is to be expected and even embraced in life, and at times my need to understand has undermined my emotional health by rejecting this reality. 

Eventually we’ll move to another condo and I won’t have to look at the empty roof across the street, and maybe in the meantime I’ll have learned just a bit more how to embrace uncertainty, love, and my own unique experience with an invisible God who may well choose to speak to me in ways that are different than those he uses with other people. I’d love to think that along with the painful, protracted wrestling that is life can come the reward of becoming more fully oneself, connected, free, and fully loved.