15 - Love
I decided to stay in Fayetteville for a while, continue counseling, and get back into good community with my church. I still planned on going back to the Middle East but not as soon as I was planning before. I got a job at a local coffee shop, moved into a house with three other girls, and joined a missions training program at my church. I was able to process with them and enjoy good, authentic community again.
As I continued to process my grief and anger, I wanted to walk away from God all together. I felt lied to about who God was and I didn’t like the new part of God I was discovering. I wondered if I had just been lied to about the character of God all of my life. I wondered why no one had ever talked to me about all of the terrible things that God allowed and did in the Old and New Testament. I wondered why no one had ever shoved that in my face and forced me to grapple with that before. If they had, would I have decided that if God was real, then he was not good? And then follow that with, maybe he’s not real at all. Or he's not the Biblical expression of who I always thought he was? Maybe God wasn’t actually good. Maybe he was just sovereign and allowed collateral damage as long as he was glorified at the end of the day. Maybe God was wholly different than I had ever thought, and that wasn’t a good thing.
The reality was though, whenever I started to think those things, I actually couldn’t step into belief and agreement with them. Even if I wanted to, (and somedays I did) I couldn’t honestly, intellectually land there. It didn’t make sense. I knew Jesus. And above all, I loved him. I couldn’t “un-experience” my life story. I couldn’t “un-know” what I knew, or “unsee” what I’d seen. As easy as it would have been to just walk out, I actually could not. I couldn’t deny what I knew. If I was going to be intellectually honest with myself, I knew, and had personally experienced, the fact that it was all true. Everything I had experienced and everything I’d read about Jesus in the Bible was true. I guess I could have forced myself to live in denial and walk away, but I would have had to pretend like half of my life experiences just hadn’t happened.
So, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was angry at God because of how he chose to rule the earth, but I couldn’t quite walk away. Partially because I had to be honest with myself and what I knew about God, but mostly, deep down, I desperately loved him. There could be no walking away for me because Jesus had actually shown me, personally, his love for me and for all of his people. I couldn’t unsee that. In my life, he had captured me with his love and grace, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I love how Mike Bickle puts this concept, “Anybody can quit except a person in love. When we are tempted to quit, the obstacle in our path is that we love God. God is raising up a people who will not quit because they are in love.”
As I was in the process of slamming the door on my faith, that stopped me. I lived between this “rock and hard place” for a few months, I didn’t know how to move forward. I felt stuck - like I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go backwards. One night I went to a worship and prayer event at a friend's church. I didn’t know anybody there and my friend was leading worship, so I sat in the back by myself. Throughout the night they had people come up on the mic and share what they felt God was speaking to them or to the group. One lady got up and said, “There is a young woman here tonight that God wants to speak to. I think I heard part of her name and it’s Susan, Sharron, or something with an S and an H.” At this point, I was a little freaked out. My name is Susannah and it’s spelled with an S and ends with an H. Talk about being called out. She continued, “There is a lot going on in your life right now and I saw a picture of fire and war drums. There was a lot of confusion and you’re wondering where God is and why he is allowing this. I see Jesus in the middle of the fire and war drums saying to you, ‘Look at me. Keep your eyes on me. Don’t focus on the fire and drums, focus on me.’” I was dumbstruck. She had read my mail and I felt God speaking to me. He wasn’t going to leave me in the place I was. What was going to get me through this was looking at him and remembering who I knew him to be.
In all my accusations against him, I knew that I knew him. I knew he was kind and good - to me and to all his people. Those years growing up and in college, where I was so close in intimacy with Jesus, created a problem for me. I couldn’t pretend like that didn’t happen and that I didn’t know him anymore. If I walked away from God because I thought he was bad, I would be blatantly ignoring who I actually knew Jesus to be. As much as I wanted to point my finger at him and yell, kick, and scream, I actually knew Jesus and that changed everything.
The investment I made in college to pursue closeness with Jesus would end up being the thing that would save my faith. Not answers to theological questions, not solving major world issues, not forcing myself to ignore the questions I had and “moving on”, but intimacy with Jesus would be my salvation.