Late in the second decade of my ministry, I took a long look at myself and wondered at what had become of me. The same thing comes to many of us who’ve been related to something or someone for going on twenty years. We wake up one day, look around at ourselves and at the person or career to which we’re yoked, and realize that something’s died.
My trouble had been coming, I suppose, for quite awhile. Such things usually don’t just show up one day, knocking at the door unannounced. We get hints along the way. A whisper that haunts us in the night. A gnawing in the gut. An ulcer, high blood pressure, depression. We get hints, but most of us don’t have a clue what we’re to do with them. And even if we did, few of us have the time or space or wisdom to do much about them. And so, we keep on—hoping things will change without us having to rock the boat, praying for a miracle so we don’t have to act, denying resolutely that we’re already living, to some extent, in the midst of a crisis. But then the knock comes, crisis stands at the door, and we’re faced with a choice. We can bolt the door and stop our ears against the crisis, or we can let it in. Neither feels like a good choice. But I’m learning—largely through the witness of those women and men who’ve lived life best—that embracing crisis is the path of God. Ignore crisis and we’ve chosen a sure way to end up sidetracked or derailed entirely, maybe even dead. And if not dead, at least feeling like we might as well be.
I think I knew deep in my gut that were I to ignore the crisis standing at the door, I could avoid some pain in the short term, but I wouldn’t have the muscle to hold off the pain further down the road—and with the freight my crisis was carrying, I feared I’d get buried sooner not later. It was my desperation then, more than any psychological or spiritual savvy, that got me to open that door.