posted this as a comment on jared's blog last month. a little ctrl+v magic and it's been hanging out as an unpublished placeholder entry here at unleashed ever since. finally posting it now because i'm bored with my own entries -- it's like opening the fridge every five minutes, expecting that something might have materialized out of thin air -- and i'm exhausted and sleepy and can't muster up anything original right now.

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a couple of years ago i was in a place where i had to choose to walk away from everything and everyone i had poured my life into for two years. it was an agonizing and earth crumbling decision for me. aside from one single solitary friend, i was utterly alone in this town.

in an amazing display of ambivalence, i both blamed and trusted God, alternately and intensely. my faith was shaken. i was devastated that things had turned out this way. but for all my prayers and anger and confusion and despair... at the end of the day, i knew that somehow, some way, God would get me through. [...] the thought of turning away was never an option. it was my dark night of the soul... something i would not wish upon my worst enemy. but both because of and in spite of it all, my faith deepened in a way i cannot explain. it had nothing to do with reading, studying, learning, etc., because God knows i wasn't doing much of that. i may not know where all the minor prophets are and i may not have verses memorized and i may not know exegesis from a hole in the ground: but i know what it is like to have absolutely nothing to fall back on but faith. and the knowledge that i have done that, and survived, will affect my soul until i am removed from this life.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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