Maybe it’s “with the faith of a mustard seed, you can move to the mountains.”
That makes a lot of sense for me at least.
See, I want to tell you the story. I want to tell you about how I ended up in a completely different place, looking at unfamiliar ceilings, and fighting with God a lot. But as I try to find the beginning of the story, it seems like it is always eluding me. The puzzle still seems incomplete no matter how many pieces I add. So, I’m going to start at the end, and like the years of BC we’ll just keep counting up while going backwards until maybe we find where this whole thing started.
Let’s start with how I got to the mountains.
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It was like my life had crumbled into a million tiny bits. One minute I was standing on a plateau of the mountain I was climbing and, the next thing I know, the entire mountain became sand. I immediately lost my footing, fell face first into the shifting mound of hard earth, and began sliding down quickly, grappling desperately for anything that would hold still. But there was nothing.
My grandma had passed away. I could see my mother’s heartbreak, but I also knew that this marked the official transition. My grandparents were gone, now my parents were the grandparents, and whether we wanted to admit it or not we all were thinking, “who’s going to go next?” My wife was pregnant, which meant I was officially a part of the parental generation in my family. I could no longer liberally extend my adolescence. And this was the first act of my adulthood.
I had decided that I wouldn’t keep my head down any longer, and that I was going to provide for my family’s spiritual needs first, which meant entering back into the long standing conflict I was having with the senior pastor, but the conversation had ended in the exact way I had prayed it wouldn’t. I was out of a job, I could no longer afford my home, there was no way I could afford school despite getting accepted into my dream seminary and receiving a 30% scholarship. Though I was trying to provide for the spiritual needs of my family, I had sacrificed our financial, emotional, and physical needs. I was quickly finding that the spiritual resources I had were burning up.
I didn’t want to pray anymore. I didn’t want to sing worship songs, or clap my hands, or pretend that I thought God would provide, even when God had been so faithful in bringing us out to Kansas in the first place. I wanted to cry, and curse, and drink, and I did. I had so little faith left in God that I began thinking He couldn’t possibly exist, or if He did, He thought my pain was entertaining.
I was wrong. Thank God.
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I knew I was called to Fuller. I had prayed God would make it clear where he wanted me; that is a prayer that I regret, but only in retrospect. He took away every other possible answer and left me with just this one thing. I wasn’t going to get an MA in Creative Writing, or start pursuing law school (something I never told my wife I was interested in, so she’ll probably laugh when she reads this), I was going to get an MDiv and stay in ministry, because that’s what God wanted..
God seems to get what He wants.
And God was the only one that could make that happen. It started with a call from Kate’s parents. They were going to be able to provide for… all of our needs, really. I would say they provided us with financial assistance, but that is an incredible understatement. They provided those spiritual needs, and physical needs, and emotional needs. Which isn’t to say that others didn’t do that as well. The outpouring of generosity from so many people was just astounding. Our parents and friends were huge blessings, but that’s just not where the story started, so we’ll get to that later.
“We bought a new place up in the mountains, and we want you guys to live there.”
“Wait, you bought a new place? In the mountains of California? And you want us to live there?”
“Yes. And we’ll pay to have Kate fly out, and have you and a friend drive out.
And to have your stuff moved.
And your mortgage in Kansas so you won’t get foreclosed.
And…
And…
And.”
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The next thing I know, the house is packed into boxes, and those boxes are packed into one larger box, at that box is on a truck travelling across half the nation to end up in the mountains of California. Kate and I were sleeping on our friends’ floor for a while, enjoying our last few days in Kansas City. She flew out to California, and for a week I stayed to make sure that everything was done to get the house ready to sell.
This was the first of many unfamiliar ceilings.
I visited my parents to tell them goodbye, and to apologize for not having more time to see them while I was living so close. I left my dogs with my sister so they wouldn’t have to move all over the place while we got settled. I cried a lot, and then I felt like I couldn’t cry for a while, but there was still this pressure behind my eyes that reminded me that I still had things to cry about, but no tears left to shed.
It was a really weird place to be. I remember visiting my parents in St. Joe and thinking that I would probably move out to Kansas City, and the whole thing felt like a dream. Now I was finishing that chapter of my life, and preparing to move back to California, and I never felt like I woke up. It was almost as if I just got further into a dream, I had settled in this place of being unsettled. Knowing that the ground was never going to be stable, I taught myself to float above it by never being fully present.
The feeling of transition is so impalpable that describing it becomes impossible. It’s like asking how apathy feels. “Well, it sort of feels like nothing at all.”
I can’t say I was angry, or hurt, or sad, or depressed. I was all of those things, but they were even more intangible than the transition itself.
---
I felt that way for the entirety of the road trip. Caleb and I decided that we would travel to Denver to see some friends from college, then head down to Albuquerque, for some Whataburger and blue meth. And then over to Phoenix to visit some more friends from college. I started to develop this sense that somehow everything got stuck in this weird state of transition. It wasn’t just me, but it was everyone I knew from years ago. Everyone had different stories to tell about how they were in this weird place in life, not quite sure what was next and not fully understanding what just happened either.
When I finally arrived out here I got to talk with my friend Josh, who was a huge part of my time in Bible College, and we started to talk about what faith was. When you’re in this weird state of transition people often like to say things like “well, it’s all God’s will, and it will happen in God’s time, so just have faith.”
And not to get into a whole Calvinist/Arminian, Fate vs Free-will sort of debate, but those causal statements certainly do bring up a lot deeper issues that are hard to comprehend. Like, obviously I have the ability to make rational decisions, to weigh out consequences and to be thoughtful and discerning, and God wants us to use those aspects of our humanity. Wisdom is essential to righteousness. But, even the most rational decisions don’t always work out. And often times it seems like God is calling us to make irrational decisions.
Before the decision was made to head back to California, my wife and I got into a few heated conversations about what we should do. It seemed like there may be some opportunities to stay in Lawrence and keep our house, but it would be really tough and would require a lot of faith, but I absolutely wanted to stay. I knew God had called me out to Lawrence in the first place and I knew that I didn’t want to leave.
My wife, however, was pregnant, and wanted stability, and wanted to be close to her family, and figured that if we would have to move to attend Fuller at some point, we might as well move now.
We used as much discernment and wisdom as we could, and we prayed even when we felt like it was the last thing we wanted to do. Ultimately I woke up one day and said “my wife is pregnant, and that’s the main priority. So if she thinks we need to be back in California, we’re going back to California.”
I wasn’t happy with the idea. There were times when I was terrified because I felt like there was a distinct chance that we were going against God’s will and I was going to get Jonah’d up into some terrible place realizing that all my running was pointless. And people would point at me and say, “see how little faith he had? See what happens when you don’t listen to God?”
But that is faith. Even if it’s just faith the size of a mustard seed. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1) And I hoped to God that I was making decisions that would end up alright for my wife, and my son, and myself. I had assurance that God was real, and God was good, and God would make this terrible stuff all point back to His righteousness. I had faith in a God who I felt so distant from, and so angry with, I had faith that somehow He would show up in a big way if I just let go.
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So Caleb and I were pulled over on the side of a curvy mountain road. And by curvy I mean voluptuous. I’m talking complete 180 degree turns with a uphill grade that felt like trying to drive up Splash Mountain backwards. We had decided to go the “back way” up the mountain, based on a misinterpreted suggestion from my wife. There are 3 main ways up to the mountains. The first we’ll call the “front way”, it’s the logical, google maps way of driving up the mountain. Then, there’s a path that is slightly more South East that does a bit more backtracking, but is supposedly a lower grade and has fewer turns… this is what they call the “back way”.
Then there’s the way we went. This path went up the eastern face of the mountain range, the other two both were on the western face. (If the “front way” is on the western face, then it makes sense to… nevermind, you get the picture.) The third way, my wife later referred to as the “worst way” or “the way nobody goes”.
Caleb and I are driving this hybrid SUV that is towing a Corolla behind it. Both the gas engine and the electric engine are just roaring and you can see the MPH slowly going down.
“I’ve got the pedal to the metal”
“and it’s not?”
“no.”
“oh geez.”
That’s when the alert showed up on the screen saying “Engine Overheated, please pullover to a safe location immediately.”
That’s when it clicked for me. This whole stinking move was a terrible idea. I found myself yelling to God again, trying to express all that deep rooted anger and disappointment.
“God, everything happens for a reason right? You did this on purpose? You’re making this stuff (not the actual s-word I used) happen, aren’t you? You’re so great, and powerful, and good, then why the (expletive deleted) am I here?!”
What if this isn’t what God wants?
What if the reason some things happen is just because people are terrible, and not because God had this greater thing all worked out? What if God really truly wants people to have every good thing in the world and yet people just go around messing it up?
I had to make a decision at that point. I had to decide what was more important, believing that God wants all this stuff to happen, or believing that God is good.
With the tiniest bit of faith that I had left, I decided to put it into the “God is good” camp, and that’s when things started to make sense. After weeks and weeks of being angry and hurt, and feeling like God wasn’t there, and wasn’t answering my prayers, it finally made sense.
“God, why would you do this? Why am I out of a job, while my wife is pregnant? Why would you let this happen in a church, the place that’s supposed to be filled with you?”
“I didn’t. I wanted what was good, I wanted you to stay. You know I called you there, you know my will for you, but people messed it up. It sucks.”
“God, why are you hurting me so much?”
“I’m not. People have hurt you. People have failed. You have failed. But I’ve protected you. I’ve given you charity, I’ve given you choices to make.”
---
There are three ways up the mountain. Three ways to get to where God wants me. I chose the way that made the most sense to me, and I ended up on the side of the road with a broken down car wondering how in the world I got here. I chose the “worst way” thinking it was simply the “back way”. How was I supposed to know?
But I can’t blame God for the path, when the promise was the destination.
Why did the Israelites have to wander around in the desert so long before they entered the promised land? Because the Israelites were idiots. Why did I have to move to California? Because some people in Kansas made a terrible decision, that was completely not what God wanted, and it left me without a way to provide for my wife and baby, and so I had to make some decisions, and I chose to move to California.
I know it sounds like a cop-out. Essentially, I’ll just blame all bad things on “people” and then give God all the credit for good things. This makes God seem cool, and “people” seem terrible, even though maybe it’s the other way around, or maybe it’s a mix of the two. We can talk about the grey areas all we want, but that’s where the faith comes in. I had faith in a good God, a loving God, a God who would suffer for me, not cause me suffering.
I don’t have faith in people.
People hate, and hurt others. They’re prideful and cold-hearted. So if I have to choose which one to give the benefit of the doubt to, I’m giving it to Christ.
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So we stopped the car and waited for it to cool down. After a few minutes we drove about a quarter of a mile and then had to stop again. We continued this fun routine for the next hour of a trip that was only supposed to be 20 minutes.
But when I arrived at the top of the mountain, the air was immediately cooler. I drove up to the house and I could see the lake just outside of our backyard, surrounded by towering peaks that scraped the bottoms of clouds.
When I strip away my doubts and my failures. When I take all of my pain and hurt out of the equation, and I just try to see what God did, I’m amazed.
All of the help that we’ve received from people, friends, family, strangers, it reminds me of how good He is.
The first full day I spent in Big Bear I went to apply for jobs. I didn’t have a resume, or any connections, and I walked into a venue that had just opened up a few months ago. I asked if they were hiring and immediately got an interview with the manager who offered me a position working security. When I went around to other places in Big Bear it became clear that we’re entering a slow season and no one is hiring til November.
A few days later we went down the mountain to apply for jobs by Fuller. I started putting my feelers out and had one loose connection to a tutoring center. When I walked in I was met with a familiar face. A woman named Sue who I had gotten to know during my time in Montebello was sitting at the front desk. I asked her what she was doing there and she tells me she’s vetting resumes because they were overwhelmed and needed to hire some people. She had been praying for Kate and I this whole time.
It’s just amazing. It’s eerie. It’s so obvious that God was just putting the pieces together. Sue couldn’t have known that I’d walk into that tutoring center. The manager at The Cave had no idea how desperately I needed that job. No one was responsible for making the mountains beautiful, or the air fresh. It was all God.
“See Alex, I told you, I want good things for you. All I needed was faith the size of a mustard seed.”
“Well good, cause that’s all I’ve got.”
Next week… “How I Got Here Pt. 2 or Goodness, gracious! How did you lose your job?”
|| Posted by Alex ||
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