Not too long ago, I found myself in a place where I knew the next step on this journey. I knew what I needed to be willing to do, but I wasn't sure if I was, in fact, willing. All I saw was massive amounts of risk. I saw every possible way, whether realistic or not, of this step going wrong...the ways I could be hurt...the bottomless pits I could fall into...the undoing of me that might not be un-undone. I just stopped. As I stayed there, stuck in the fear, I thought a lot about safety and risk and a very brief conversation I had via email with my pastor a couple years ago was brought to mind.
This pastor and I had an ongoing conversation at the time, and he was offering me help for the wounds of my past. It was something I'd never had offered to me before. In fact, he was the first person to really even acknowledge there were wounds to begin with. As I considered his offer, I wasn't sure I wanted to accept it. I wasn't sure I could accept it. I wanted him to promise me that if I accepted this offer for help I would be completely safe, never to be hurt again. I wanted a guarantee that he knew he couldn't give me.
The reason he knew he couldn't offer me the guarantee I wanted was not because he didn't want to help me or to see healing in my life. It was because he knows his own humanness and the humanness of the person he knew could help me. He understood that he and the other person are not perfect, that mistakes happen, that hurt can happen even with the best of intentions. He understood that there was risk in accepting the offer of help he was holding out to me. He assured me that the hope was the risk would end in healing rather than hurt, but the only promise he could offer me, the only guarantee, was a God who cared more deeply for me than I could imagine and who would always be with me.
As I considered the step in front of me, I felt all the same fears I felt when my pastor offered me help. I struggled to see beyond the risks I would have to take, all the ways this step forward could go wrong and send me backwards. I found myself wanting a promise again...a guarantee that the risk would be worth it, that the worst case scenario's that played in my mind would be avoided, that I would be safe. I wanted a promise that no one could make me.
You see, on this side of heaven, God uses real, imperfect, broken people in the lives of other real, imperfect, broken people to bring about His purposes, His plans, His healing. Yet when I see the real, imperfect, broken people He puts in my life, I see risk. I see the lack of safety. I want to start building walls to protect myself from the very people He has sent to be His hands and His feet in my life. I start asking for promises no human can make and forget every promise He has kept, and is keeping, and will always keep. I see the real, imperfect, broken people and fail to see the perfect, loving, big, faithful God who sent them.
So now, as I continue to work through this step I have in front of me, I see the risks. I don't feel any safer. However, instead of looking for promises that can't be made, I remember the promises He's already given...promises of redemption and freedom and restoration of years stolen. I remember the promises He's faithfully kept...promises to love me, care for me, always be with me. I look again at the real, imperfect, broken people He has placed in my life, and this time I see His hands, His feet, His heart reflected by them. Though every step of this journey brings with it some level of risk, some feeling of safety missing, I remember the One I am promised and, with arms locked with my real, imperfect, broken people, our arms together locked with our promise keeping God, keep pressing on.
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