The Terror of In-Betweeness

Life is a kind of unraveling of the mystery of ourselves, a never-ending search for clues about the stranger that resides within. The older we get, the more complicated the mystery becomes. Our identity weaves its web into more intricate and sticky patterns. The more we know about ourselves, the less we know...and yet...yet there is, at the same time, a new kind of knowing.

I just turned 50.

Oddly, I have been thinking back to my childhood, to the day I was "born again." It was almost 40 years ago, but I can still remember that night. Up in front of the obscure Missionary Baptist Church of Santa Ana, CA, stood Pastor Johnny Womack screaming--shouting (and could he shout!) that we needed to be saved. I believed him. I wanted to be saved, and I was. Driving home in the car with my parents, my heart was filled with a peace that really did pass all understanding. It's been 39 years since that night. I am a lot more "sophisticated" than I was back then, but one thing is certain--whatever happened that night was real. It was the beginning of a glorious romp through life with God, and I have never regretted it.

A lot of time has passed since then. A lot of water has gone under the bridge. So much has happened in my lifeÑand in my friends' livesÑin these last four decades that my faith has truly taken a beating. It's still there, but it doesn't look much like it did in those beginning years of my Christian life.

I have disappointed God so many times...and I have been disappointed by God a few times as well. There have been so many mentors--Christians who I admired greatly--who stumbled and fell, never again to recover their faith; so many "truths" about the Gospel that turned out to be false; so many casualties, so many losses, so many assumptions that turned out to be just that--assumptions, not truth.

One such assumption, in particular, has haunted me throughout all my Christian experience: the Assumption of the Changed Life. I was taught that if I was a Christian, then people would see a marked difference in my life!!! And further, I was taught that the closer I was to GodÑthe more spiritual I was--the greater and more visible that difference would be.

I have always believed there was a visible sign of the invisible reality of conversion. I believed that Christianity changed you outside...not just inside.

I don't believe that anymore.

It is not that I don't believe that Jesus changes you, it is just that my definition of "change" has changed. Whatever the change is, it is not so much outward as it is inward. This difference that God makes is often visible only to God...and no one else. It is a new way of looking at God, a new way of understanding God, an inner new-birth that liberates us not only from sin, but from our old way of viewing God. It is intimacy rather than ecstasy; it is seeing rather than speaking; it is loving rather than living; it is dancing rather than believing; it is silence rather than sentences; it is worship rather than wordship; it is playing rather than praying; it is yearning rather than conviction; it is faith characterized more by passion than belief.

Just seeing those words frightens me. It frightens me because the words sound dangerous--like I have abandoned my faith. But I haven't abandoned my faith, I have abandoned a way of looking at my faith. Of course we change when we meet Jesus, of course we are never the same, of course people see a difference. Life is different. But what is different is different than I thought.

Let me see if I can explain it another way.

When I was little, I used to listen on the radio to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. I liked Tonto the best. The Lone Ranger was interesting, but he was weird. He wore a mask. I envied Tonto. Tonto was a tracker. He could find anybody. How I wished I could look at dirt and leaves on the ground and read who had been there, and when, and what direction they were going, just like Tonto did. I have felt that way about God. I've read the stories of the great saints of God and of their close relationship with Him. I've struggled through the writings of the mysticsÑthose who seem to have "tracked" God and found Him, those who have "touched" GodÑand I have envied them. God has seemed so elusive to me. My whole life I have been tracking God, staring at the leaves and the dirt, never finding God's trail.

And then, suddenly I am 50.

I look once again at the disturbed dirt of my life. I stare at the leaves of the past and my heartbeat quickens! I can see something! I can see the tracks of God! I am not very close, but I am closer! I am not there, but I know there is a there!

So here I stand, looking at the ground, smelling the faint fragrance of God. Never once did it occur to me that when I found God's trail again, it would ruin my life forever--for once you feel the breath of God on your skin, you can never turn back, you can never settle for what was, you can only move on recklessly, with abandon, your heart filled with fear, your ears ringing with the constant whisper, "Fear not."

Once you find where the trail is, you are faced with a sobering truth--in order to go on, you must let go of what brought you here. You cannot go on without turning your back on what brought you to this place.

It is like swinging on a trapeze. Once you have gained the courage to swing, you never want to let go...and then, without warning (around age 50, for me), you look up and see another trapeze swinging towards you, perfectly timed to meet you, and you realize you are being asked to let go and grab onto the other trapeze. You have to release your grip. You have to reach out. You have to experience the glorious terror of inbetween-ness as you disconnect from one and reach for the other.

This past year has been a time of letting go, one finger at a time, and these last few weeks have been a terrifying weightlessness, a wait-lessness, a paralyzing stretch for the unknown. I haven't reached the other bar yet. I am somewhere in between, but I can tell you this: my heart is filled with an exhilaration, an anxious anticipation that just as I get to the other bar, I will not grasp it, but I will instead be grasped by the hand of Jesus.

I can hardly wait.

By Mike Yaconelli, author and founder of Youth Specialities, Inc.. Used with permission.

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