Martyrs and Thieves

It is past my bedtime and I have already seen this singer several times before, but I still find myself heading downtown. The first time I heard her sing was over twenty years ago in a crowded Baptist college auditorium. Then again almost ten years later to a much thinner crowd at the House of Blues. The fans looked the same, only older and tentatively ordering drinks from the bar. She seemed vulnerable up there on stage that night. Only a few days later, Christianity Today published an article about her return and sexual preference.

I show up to a bar with an old summer camper turned friend. Then, we were only allowed to play Christian music so we blared Kansas across the bunk beds neatly arranged in the alcove. The setting is so different from summer camp, Baptist auditoriums or even the House of Blues. Smaller, more intimate leaving very little distance between the performer and our response. My friend and I order beers as she sings through her newer catalog.

My faith used to feel so much bigger. These days it can feel like an afterthought.

A prayer shot off in traffic or as I am already falling asleep.

I struggle through any kind of devotional book. I make it to church most weekends but pray with my eyes open and occasionally with my heart closed. I talk to my God all the time in ways that seem too honest to call prayer, even though I know that is the best kind. Sometimes I feel like it is a one-sided conversation, but I can’t seem to hang up.

Twenty years ago my faith took up so much more space.

There were Christian CDs mixed in with the ones marked explicit lyrics. There was occasionally beer in my fridge but always a Bible on my coffee table. I hung out in coffee shops, college ministries and apartment hot tubs. I made all the mistakes but still managed to squeeze in a quiet time or go to a bible study. We wrote our requests on notecards and traded them like baseball cards and taped them to our bathroom mirrors. We prayed long exhausting prayers about things I wouldn’t spend two minutes on now. Even then, my faith never felt as solid as I thought everyone else’s must have.

It felt slippery, loose and full of gray and a part of my heart assumed I must be doing it wrong.

At the same time my faith felt warm and big and true.

A truth that I have doubted a hundred times but never managed to let go of. Maybe because it is holding on to me rather than the other way around.

I miss it, that small narrow faith that felt so consuming. It filled living room couches and strummed guitars. It was hands to hold during ridiculous popcorn prayers. These days I fill my table and wine glasses. There is a guitar gathering dust in the corner.

My daughter occasionally lets me hold her hand.

There are books littering my coffee table, but it would take me a minute to locate a bible. Crosses hang on my wall. I still make it to church more Sundays than not.

My faith still feels slippery, loose and full of gray.

However, these days that uncertainty makes me think that maybe I am getting it right. I go in circles of chasing it and being chased. I used to be jealous of the people that I thought had such a solid faith. A deep seated belief that they never seem to question or wrestle.

Now, I wonder if maybe the questions and the wrestling are what allow a faith to stretch, expand and include. A faith that bends can also encircle. It becomes a soft place to land rather than a hard stone in my chest.

Like the singer on stage, my life has its own before and after.

Mine was never written about in a magazine. Instead it took place in noisy ICU hallways with tubes and alarms and a new hole in my head. I couldn’t find God anywhere in the pain that lasted for years. And once again I felt my faith loose and so slippery and black. Certainly not as solid as metal plate screwed into my skull.

Things have mostly healed and my God, shows Her face from time to time. I hear Him in the wind and laughter. Tonight I hear it in the songs we sing from old couches, college auditoriums and camp alcoves. I know enough to frustrate me and too much to let go.

The second set are all the old songs. I sing along, from muscle memory. My cheeks are wet. The friend I brought, leaning in saying I taught her things about faith and doubt and religion. That I helped shape her teenage heart in a way that is big enough to hold them all at the same time. In a way where she has rarely felt like she was doing it wrong. She remembers it so clearly, just like she remembers all the lyrics to these songs. It is all fuzzier to me.

The words.

The faith.

It doesn’t feel as big as it did back then, but it somehow feels like it can hold more.

My twenty-year-old faith took up all the space in the room, pushing everything else out.

My forty-year-old faith makes space for others and questions and so many different answers.

But bigger, somehow in this small bar, my table cluttered with empty bottles.

Full of old songs and new ones.

March 31, 2022

Don't want to miss any bonus writing or get a free literary playlist in your inbox each 6-8 weeks -- sign up for my progress report here (and you can bet this song will be on the next one).