The heat comes early. A Bible lay on the bench, out of reach unless I get up. I close my eyes against the slant of light, and against the air stirred by the blades of the ceiling fan. I lean my head back, resting it on the cushy part of my chair.

I don’t hear You like I used to.

Yes, you do. You just don’t trust Me like you used to.

My eyes pop open. It’s true.

Life has always been bloody and hard. Still I rarely wavered. Hope held me captive. People who know have seen the warring places I’ve come through, they see my hard things. I see them. Everyone sees them. The worst, the very worst, happened then, not now. And truly, there is peace and healing and even glory, glory, glory.

I have a testimony.

So why is today such a battle? Why do I wrestle with what should be Small Things?[/tweet_this]

Because one day a life-smack blindsided me. I came to the cruel understanding that Things Weren’t The Way I Thought They Were and They Never Would Be. Deep things. Things I didn’t know were so dear until they were ripped from the side of my heart. Non-recoverable things.

Bereft, like a child whose mother never came, I watched everyone else go home while the sun died.

It was a rude discovery, to find I’d been on training wheels the entire journey thus far. It rankled. Still does. There I had been, thinking I had A Large Faith (they told me I did) when, in reality, I had never been allowed to crash too hard. It had only felt that way because my breath came fast and my sweat stank and my strong thigh muscles burned, burned, burned and I got plenty of bruises.

You can break both ways, but there’s a difference between being caught and being picked up out of the dirt.

Distracted by my wounds, I didn’t realize I’d lost more than my balance.

My faith has not been of the bold sort lately. More often it is the grasping kind that clings, attempting to fold itself into His side. A redeeming failure, but there is something more.

Do I want to have an Audacious Faith?

Sometimes, I wish I were still ignorant. Sometimes, when people talk to me, wise words come out of my mouth and I wish I could snatch them back.

There’s nothing to be done for it. He is a Tenacious God.

I put my face to the wind.

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