Night Driving Synchroblog: Is This Even Faith Anymore?

I was on fire once too. My faith burned bright and hot, full of certainty and passion, as electrifying as all of the other emotions and experiences of adolescence. Then there were the eye-opening college days, the shock at learning there were other ways of being a Christian, the wonder of a God who was bigger than I had imagined, the freedom in discovering how to be wrong. I married a man newly graduated from seminary. We set out to be missionaries and nearly lost our faith and each other on a bike path next to the Rhine River. Then came the angry years of my mid-twenties, three years of grad school and drinking too much and pretending I was too busy for the church where my husband pastored. I found my way back to that church shortly before we started to lose our babies, miscarriages over and over and over again, and I felt held there. The God of grief met me during all those early infertile years. It was sweet and intimate and quiet, even if it looked not very much like I was taught that it should. And then there was the morning in the coffeeshop in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, one final culture war battle lost, where I renounced the label evangelical in what is becoming a rite of passage for so many of us who were once on fire.

As I feel my way forward, away from an evangelical Christianity I can no longer claim as my own, a pastor-friend recommends I read John Shelby Spong. I pick up the book and wear out a yellow highlighter on it and when he writes that he can no longer think of God as a being "up there" or "out there" who could and would intervene, answer prayers and reward and punish according to the divine will, I set the book in my lap and look up.

And nothing breaks. Nothing shatters, or cracks. I feel nothing give way beneath me. There is very little angst. There is just me and the growing realization that I may have already let go.

It's spring here. The redbuds and the dogwoods are in lush, ecstatic bloom. I wake in the middle of the night to a symphony of birdsong outside my open window and I report to my balcony faithfully for the sunset on the progressively later evenings. I stare and I admire, I marvel at it all with a sort of detachment I am not used to. I am not moved by it, not animated by it or by whatever force is supposed to animate us both.

The husband and I escaped to a hillside winery a few days ago in the middle of the afternoon. Good books, cold white wine, a canvas bag full of sharp Irish cheddar and salt & pepper Triscuits. It looked perfect. It Instagrammed perfect. I pretended yes, this is exactly what we needed. But all I really took with me from that perfect afternoon was a sunburn on my left arm. It got hot and we drank the wine too quickly and I had to keep shifting his head from my lap so I could go pee again. I feel like I cannot even show up for my own perfect moments.

Wise people tell me not to fear this detached, darkening place. That I am not staring into an abyss, I'm on the precipice of my own becoming. That the God I'm certain I have lost is as close as my breath, sitting with me now even as I recount this emptiness, here in this cliched Nashville loneliness: lit candles, Eagle Rare whiskey on the rocks, the Liturgists album on repeat. I don't know that anymore. But I see that God was there in the heady, passionate days and there when I nearly set my whole life ablaze just to watch it burn to the ground. God found me in the angry years and the grieving years, I can see it now, trace a merciful hand through all that pain. Is God even here, when I am not certain of anything except that I seem to have misplaced God somewhere along the way? Find us, Addie writes in Night Driving. Find me. I starred that line in blue pen in my book today, as much of a prayer as I can manage: find me.


A Synchroblog with Addie Zierman to celebrate the release of her fantastic new book Night Driving (read this! It was so honest). Read the rest of the synchroblogs here

Ash Wednesday

It was on or about this time five years ago that we stood in a parking lot in Fairfax, Virginia, staring at an ultrasound photo of an 8 week old embryo. We had already had a scare that took us to the emergency room in the middle of the night, but today the doctor told us that everything looked fine, that we didn’t have any reason to be afraid. I will never ever forget standing next to Todd’s car in that parking lot with my arms around him and asking him are we really having a baby and how he held me and said, yeah, I think we really are and we giggled. Just burst out laughing for the joy of it all.

I’ve been thinking about those kids in that parking lot for a few weeks now, how young they seem in my memory, how naïve and scared and hopeful, how simple it was then, how clueless they were to what was ahead. How here we are, 5 years later, and still no babies. How old I feel now, both more mature and tired.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. We lost that first baby on Ash Wednesday, 2011. Stood again in that same parking lot, gaping at each other in complete confusion, bewildered as to how to cope with the sudden loss. Clueless again, having not yet learned to love each other while grieving. My first real taste of hope turned to ash in my mouth.

It’s unfair to say we’ve been trying for babies for 5 years. We took a healthy break for a while. Then we took a longer, unhealthy break. The times we’ve tried I’ve only been 1% braver than I was afraid and there were lots of times I was 800% more afraid so we put it off. But we’ve been trying again for half a year, maybe finally no longer completely paralyzed with fear, and I was certain for a few reasons that this was going to be the month.

It wasn’t. Obviously. And the finding out we weren’t pregnant was brutal, drawn-out, inconclusive for far too long to be fair. Todd said it wasn’t personal; it felt personal.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Our pastor opened the sanctuary for most of the day for people to come and receive ashes. Todd and I were the only people there at 5:15 yesterday evening. The reading provided for our meditation was Joel 2:

But there’s also this, it’s not too late—

    GOD’s personal Message!—

“Come back to me and really mean it!

    Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!”

Change your life, not just your clothes.

    Come back to GOD, your God.

And here’s why: God is kind and merciful.

    He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot,

This most patient God, extravagant in love,

    always ready to cancel catastrophe.

Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now,

    maybe he’ll turn around and show pity.

Maybe, when all’s said and done,

    there’ll be blessings full and robust for your GOD!

I bowed my head and tried for a minute to conjure up the properly contrite spirit for Lent. But you know what I really wanted to say? You’ve put up with a lot from me?! I’ve put up with a lot from you! Kind and merciful? Sure, if I tilt my head and squint real hard I can see your kindness. Where is the kindness that blows the doors off the place, the mercy that is more than me just being grateful for crumbs?

I promise I’m more scandalized by the contents of my heart than you are. I read through some of my old blog posts recently, back when we were actively losing babies all the time. I was in all kinds of agony back then, but damn if I didn’t also really believe in the mercy of God. There was a song back then that saved me, played on repeat for an entire few years, with one line that I loved for its honesty but I realize now that I didn’t fully understand: if this waiting lasts forever, I’m afraid I might let go. I get it now.

And yet. I say I’m all out of hope, but there is a voice in the back of my head that says, this is it. This is when the miracle happens, when hope is completely run dry and five seconds before you let go.

Ah hope, you sneaky bastard.

My Lenten reading this morning was from Habakkuk 3:

Though the cherry trees don’t blossom

    and the strawberries don’t ripen,

Though the apples are worm-eaten

    and the wheat fields stunted,

Though the sheep pens are sheepless

    and the cattle barns empty,

I’m singing joyful praise to GOD.

    I’m turning cartwheels of joy to my Savior God.

I want that kind of faith. I don’t have it today.