The Ride
remembering that our faith keeps us securely strapped in
Remember the 1989 movie Parenthood starring Steve Martin? I recently noticed that it was streaming (I think it was Hulu?) and I couldn’t push the play button fast enough. I loved that movie as a kid! The opening scene at the baseball game catapulted me into a nostalgic time warp. (Also, it didn’t take long to realize I had clearly watched the made-for-tv version all those years ago. Yikes.)
The entire movie resonated in a completely different way now that I’m a parent. Watching each family navigate common parenting issues, from anxiety to schooling decisions, was so incredibly relatable and comforting.
But by the last twenty minutes, I was a complete mess, suffocating under the depth of emotion and empathy I felt for fictional characters. I finally quit fighting the tears and just kept mopping my face with my shirt sleeve. The scene that did me in was when the grandmother delivered a monologue in the dining room.
When I was 19, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. Up, down. Up, down. Oh, what a ride. I always wanted to go again. It was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together. Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. But that just goes around. Nothing.
I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it!
I think back to specific seasons over the last two decades when I would have given anything to skip the roller coaster and just get on the merry-go-round. Seasons when I was tired of going up and down. I longed to just sit still. Take a breath. Stop fearing. To just have answers already. To feel like I had a handle on what I was doing.
But do you know what I’ve since realized? We won’t ever get off the roller coaster. There IS no merry-go-round. Surprise!
That’s because the world we live in is broken, no matter how much we don’t want it to be true. Bad things happen. Our kids struggle. We watch helplessly. Dreams dissolve. Hope feels distant. Then we turn a corner. Things are looking up. We rejoice in our changing circumstances, and we triumph!
And the cycle begins again. And again. And again.
Learning to accept that has been one of the most challenging parts of my life. Wanting to shield ourselves from heartache or striving to avoid pain is understandable. But we all know it’s impossible.
At church one Sunday, our pastor taught a great lesson about faith that hasn’t left my mind since. It’s always a good idea to define terms. So when we talk about faith, we often think of it as a thing that we possess. We can have a whole bunch of it, or even just a tiny mustard seed’s worth.
But really, Christian faith (a gift from God) is trusting in something. The object you have faith in matters very much. And for us, the object is Jesus.
Though we can’t see Him, we’re reminded that our faith grows all the more when we trust Him in spite of our lack of physical interaction. The object of our faith has repeatedly assured us, both in scripture and throughout our lives, that He can be trusted with every burden and trial that we endure.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1
I’ve had to cling to my faith in ways I never imagined when I became a mom of adult children. I think it’s because the illusion of control is so strong when our kids are under our roof. Once they leave home and begin making lives for themselves, apart from our daily guidance, it’s easy to feel like we’re in a free fall. It’s easy to wish we could just get off the roller coaster, find a merry-go-round with a nice bench or big plastic horse, and take a breather for a minute or a decade.
But the merry-go-round life doesn’t offer the same thrill. Seeing your child overcome an obstacle, no matter their age. Trusting when you can’t see a way out, and suddenly things worked out better than you could have asked or imagined. Learning to trust God a little more every time you’re in a valley.
On the merry-go-round, there’s no opportunity to squeeze our eyes shut, hold on tight, and truly grab hold of the promises of Jesus.
Because when you walk through life placing every ounce of your trust in the promises Jesus, even the terrifying, stomach-dropping, scream-inducing twists and turns are redeemed. Imagine a merry-go-round life. While it’s tempting to our human minds, whose nature it to protect us from harm, it would likely remove some of the most life-giving and beautiful experiences of the Christian life.
What would our faith look like if nothing went wrong? If our kids never experienced pain we couldn’t stop or prevent? If we didn’t feel disappointment or despair? (I know - your first thought is probably the same as mine. That actually sounds fantastic.)
But if that were so, our faith would look a lot like looking in the mirror. It would be easy to think we are the ones making the world go ‘round. We’d be putting our trust in the things we think we can achieve or make happen. Or worse, not putting our trust in anything.
Put another (and more eloquent) way, I recently read the following quote by Chuck Swindoll:
Growth thrives in the soil of struggle.
The most profound chapters of our spiritual journey are often written in life’s challenging seasons. It’s in the valleys when our roots grow deepest, in the storms where our faith becomes unshakable, and in the desert where we learn to truly depend on His provision.
Take heart: just as James reminds us, the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
Walking through life with our faith securely focused on Jesus is the most thrilling ride of all. We’ll get so much out of it.
An eternity more.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16