Faithful Collision & Tenacious Comeback

Faithful Collisions & Tenacious Comebacks

17:48

While driving down the road in early November, my mom queried, “What do we need to do to get you tuned up and ready for Thanksgiving?” My jovial, coughing reply came back, “Oh, nothing. It’s hopeless. Holidays equal sickness. It’s the law of our Henson land, don’t ya know?”

And sure enough, a few hours later, I was pressing “cancel reservation” on the Tabletop App. I stared at that button long and hard as tears filled my eyes. Canceling the festive family-style Thanksgiving meal on the beach. Canceling the seafood gumbo. Canceling the delish honey ham and unlimited dessert bar! (I had already drafted a genuinely heartfelt “I’m sorry for my poor life choices” email to my Mayo Endocrinology team.)

After finally realizing that staring at the screen wasn’t going to change my reality, I tapped “cancel” just as Dad entered my room. My eyes moist, he cupped my face in his hand and soothed, “We’re gonna be together. At home. Not the hospital. That’s what Thanksgiving is all about. Togetherness.” Knowing my heart wasn’t really hurting for myself, he gently squeezed my shoulder and said, “ND is gonna be okay, too. She won’t break over this cancellation. In the end, she just wants you.”

Mom and I started rapid-fire texting, trying to rescue Thanksgiving in a day. ND snuggled close as I told her we had to cancel the reservation. She didn’t crumble but instead comforted me. “It’s okay. We’ll try again next year. I know you’re doing your best. Don’t cry, Mom. Just breathe.”

We pivoted our meal to easy and cozy: shells and cheese, Sister Schubert’s rolls, instant mashed potatoes, and chocolate cake from the award-winning Jesse’s Restaurant down the lane. Walmart Delivery handled the rest - turkey, ham, the basics. Thanksgiving, improvised.

Later, I listened to Lovie chat with her five-year-old cousin about how excited she was for Thanksgiving Eve.  Her plans included an epic bubble bath with sparkling grape juice in “that fancy cup” and being Nanny’s sous-chef for our impromptu “heat and serve” meal. While her Thanksgiving plans had changed, her excitement over the simple things had not diminished.

I sat in my recliner. Fighting the panic of air hunger. Resting my lungs while my BiPAP did the hard breathing work for me. The oxygen concentrator made its “pftt pftt” sound, feeding a minuscule 2 liters of oxygen into my mask. My heart was filled with sadness and frustration. Not really a bundle of thanks. More a bundle of “What are you doing, Lord?!?”

To say the least, my Thanksgiving didn’t really look thankful. I was struggling to find even a scrap of joy or delight. And it’s not that the blessings weren’t there. I had so much to be thankful for in those moments. I was home. I wasn’t in the ICU. I was alive! And there were so many other things to find when I looked. But can I be honest? I didn’t want to have to look. I didn’t want to have to reframe. I didn’t want to dig. I just wanted that “happy-go-lucky” life where rainbows and skittles abounded!

My mind ran in a complex circle of thoughts. But as more questions ran through my mind, the implications of their answers exhausted me. What if I’m too tired to care? What if I just want to drown myself in chocolate and carbs? What if the antidote to my pain was more than I had the capacity to embrace in that moment?

For the next twenty-nine days, I sank into muck and mire. Steroids kept my body oxygenating and wrecked my adrenal system in the process. I cried in silence and wondered how to survive another minute.  I was left hanging on by a thread as the Lord stayed silent. His presence never gone, but His hand withheld.

In emotional anguish, when God’s hand feels distant but His presence isn’t gone, we enter the collision: faith meets grit, and our finite minds strive to bow before an infinite God.

We see this pattern of faithful collision and tenacious comeback over and over in Scripture.

Job collides with the heartbreaking search for God’s presence. “Behold, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive Him; on the left hand when He is working, I do not behold Him; He turns to the right hand, but I do not see Him.”[1] We all know the story.  God permits the hedge to fall, and Job is inundated with grief upon sorrow, pain upon ache, and sadness upon despair.  But through it all, Job comes back with a gritty conjunction, “But…” “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”[2]

Habakkuk shows another faithful collision. “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not hear?”[3] Habakkuk was crying for justice to be served. But God wasn’t moving. And not only was God not moving His hand in Habakkuk’s timetable, but He wasn’t using the method Habakkuk thought best. This prophet was wrestling with God’s method and even God’s moral logic. Yet we see Habakkuk’s comeback in chapter three when he, too, uses a conjunction to introduce a contrasting idea. “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; He makes me tread on my high places.”[4]

David. Hannah. Elijah. Jeremiah. Paul. All mighty wayfarers who had many faithful collisions and tenacious comebacks. A.W. Tozer reminds us, “Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.”

How do we continuously gaze at the heart of our God? When faith-filled collision and tenacious comeback become the foundation of our soul, what changes? Since “man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,”[5] how might we build a routine of faithful collision and tenacious comeback?

With a little help from my friend Gypity (aka ChatGPT), an acronym was born.  A little path for wayfarers whose faith collides in a life of grief while grasping onto biblical truth with rebellious abandon.

F Face God with Honest Lament

A Anchor Ourselves in His Character

I Incline to Our Human Limits

T Take the Next Faithful Step

H Hold Fast with the Saints

God doesn’t expect or even request that we gloss over our grief. He not only sees our struggles, but because of God’s “time-less-ness,” He has already been through our pain and feels it intimately with us. Turning to the Lord with honest lament often starts the faithful collision! As we share our grief with the Lord - holding nothing back - our questions for and disappointment in the Lord often surface and overtake our soul.

So, while drowning in lamentation, our response then must be to anchor our mind in God’s truthful character. We must choose mind over matter as we pointedly “call to mind”[6] God’s truth. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”[7] Truth is that God is good even when He doesn’t feel good. Truth is that God is faithful - in the past, the present, and the future. We must not allow our emotions to dictate our truth.

And as we stare at the magnitude of God’s character, the acknowledgment of our human-limits come clearly into focus. We bow before the mystery of God’s plan. We relish the privilege of being right with the Lord while still being confused. It’s a heart mindset that cries out “Lord, I don’t have to solve the story to rest in You in this chapter.” We shift from demanding that the Lord explain Himself to a humble plea that He show us His gracious character. This part of the faithful collision – inclining to our human limits – says “I will keep trusting without pretending I can understand.”

And then we pivot our comeback. We rise with what feeble strength we have left.  We prepare to take a half-step forward. It may be a Gethsemane step, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”[8] It’s the dogged tenacity of Habakkuk: “I take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what He will say to me…”[9] Our comeback isn’t rated by size but by steady grit.

But sometimes, that steady grit needs a boost of help. As we hold fast to our comeback, we encourage fellow wayfarers in their comebacks.  And by doing so, receive strength for our own.  (Isn’t it cool how God works like that?)  “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” [10]

(Side note for another day: “not neglecting to meet together” does not indicate a requirement to physically gather if physical limitations stand in the way. Gathering can happen in so many ways… especially with technology!  Take heart, my fellow wayfarers.  You don’t have to be an island alone even when health keeps you homebound.)

As hard as it so often feels, God didn’t make us to be an island.  Instead, He made us to share each other’s burdens. And beyond the community God has planted us in now, we have a great cloud of witnesses whose lives can give us beautiful examples of faithful collision and tenacious comeback!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith!”[11]

Think Charles Spurgeon, Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Elliot, and even modern heroes like Katherine Wolf and Dave Furman.

Oh, my friends.  Grab hold of F.A.I.T.H. and create a rhythm of faithful collision and tenacious comeback!

Wayfarers, Thanksgiving won’t always feel thankful. Plans will be easy to make and hard to maintain. Physical limitations will bring us to our knees. Tears will spill over. But our power to survive lies in our ability to embrace the collision of faith and grit—and delight in the tenacious comeback against the enemy’s whisper that our ache can steal our awe.

May the Lord bless you with honest lament—pouring out your grief without holding back. May He give you strength to anchor yourself in His unchanging character. May your human limitations usher in restful hope: you are not in control, but God alone has been, is, and will be good. May Jesus Christ hold you up and give you the fortitude to take the next faithful half-step. And as you stumble forward, may your eyes lift - past the ache - to Jesus, and to the great cloud of witnesses cheering you onward.

Face God with Honest Lament

   Anchor Ourselves in His Character

      Incline to Our Human Limits

         Take the Next Faithful Step

            Hold Fast with the Saints

With Grit and Grace,

AfterSight™

A holy pause, asking the questions that linger after the words have been read.

AfterSight One:  What “cancellation” have you had to press lately—literally or figuratively—and what emotions surfaced when you did?

AfterSight Two:  In your own words, what does “faithful collision” look like in your life right now?

AfterSight Three: Which line from your “inner spiral” sounds most like you: “I’m too tired to care,” “I just want to numb,” or “The antidote costs more than I can give”? Why that one?

AfterSight Four:  Which part of F.A.I.T.H. is hardest for you right now (Face / Anchor / Incline / Take / Hold)?

AfterSight Five:  Who is one “saint” (friend, family member, church member, online community, mentor) God may be inviting you to hold fast with—either to receive support or to offer it? What would it look like to reach out this week in a simple way?

Copyright Reflection: This reflection is entirely my own — written from my lived experience, my time with the Lord, and the truths He continues to teach me. I occasionally use AI tools for assistance with spelling, punctuation, organization, an acronym, or light research. However, the heart, message, and voice of this piece are fully mine and prayerfully guided by the Lord. © Life: In the Blink of an Eye™ | Sarah-Marie Henson | LITBOAE

For the Curious:

[1] Job 23:8–9

[2] Job 23:10

[3] Habakkuk 1:2

[4] Habakkuk 3:18–19

[5] Job 5:7

[6] Lamentations 3:21

[7] Lamentations 3:21–23

[8] Matthew 26:39

[9] Habakkuk 2:1

[10] Hebrews 10:23–25

[11] Hebrews 12:1–2