The Familiarity of Uncertainty
Holy Week began last Monday morning with a predawn drive to the hospital. I’d awakened with chest pain and my heart rate at 160 - about 95 bpm faster than it normally beats. On that same day, invitations were being mailed out to congregants, friends and family to my ordination service which is May 7th at Christchurch. (You are all invited!) As my husband drove down highway 9 toward the ER and I lay watching a full moon pierce the darkness, I wondered if it was going to happen. The future was uncertain.
It’s been a long journey. In March I completed the last class of my Master of Divinity degree and will graduate in June. Three and a half years of seminary begun at age 56 is behind me. In that span of time, we’ve also sold a home of twenty years and I’ve healed from Covid that nearly killed me in 2022. I passed my canonical exams in January and will be ordained as a vocational deacon in the Anglican Church in North America. Surely I have not come this far only to be …whatever was happening to me…sick again? …having a cardiac event? … ( I kept thinking I can’t be having a heart attack because I’m not old enough. In my mind I am perpetually 37 years old). *
My phone automatically connected via bluetooth and “Stand Your Ground” by Joshua Hyslop began to play on repeat. Funny, I don’t recall that being the last song I listened to, nor do I remember setting it to play over and over. But that’s what happened. I thought it an odd choice at first - if God was sending me this song to comfort me in this moment- but I gave in to listen mainly because I felt too terrible to reach for my phone and change it. My husband was busy driving and keeping one eye on the blinking monitor on my ring finger telling him how fast my heart was beating.
I can’t honestly say I was paying much attention to the lyrics in the moment. I caught words like “tremble in the darkness” and “search for answer” and “could not see through doubt.” I was aware, though, that this song has been meaningful to me on both my healing and vocational journeys this past year. Later, when my heart rate was restored to a reasonable 67 bpm and I could think straight, I looked up the words and realized the song is a blessing for the moments of uncertainty. (Thank you, Holy Spirit and Bluetooth).
Texting from the hospital with one of my priests who was praying Jesus would hold me in the midst of uncertainty, I asked him, “Can uncertainty become familiar?” I remarked that is sure seems so in my life lately. I silently wondered: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Like many questions, I suppose the answer begins with “It depends…”
Familiarity with uncertainty is a good thing if I’m living in the present moment, even so close to a finish line, aware that only by the breath of God will I cross that line in the future.
Familiarity with uncertainty is a good thing if I’m receiving the peace of Christ holding me through discomfort and fear, rather than refusing peace until I have a diagnosis.
Familiarity with uncertainty is a good thing if it keeps me humble. Paul warned that knowledge puffs up (1 Cor. 8:1). It makes us feel in control. We are not.
Familiarity with uncertainty is a good thing if it means I’m remembering that He is God and I am not.
I’ve linked the song and printed the lyrics below. You’ll notice in the third verse the reference to the Garden of Gethsemane. When I awoke on this Good Friday morning, thinking of the passion of Christ, it occurred to me that these are the days in which Christ stood his ground, and ours. The disciples all fail miserably and so do we. They can’t stay awake to pray. They deny and betray Jesus and they scatter and hide, the oldest sin of man. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Jesus stood his ground and on the third day, walked out victorious over the last enemy of man.
Uncertainty can be familiar; maybe not comfortable ever, but familiar, because we do not stand our ground alone. Uncertainty gives us permission to say, “I don’t know.” Uncertainty takes us by the hand and says, “Behold the mystery.” Uncertainty invites us to look to the cross, to fall to our knees, to pray, “Lord, have mercy on us.”
Let’s get familiar with uncertainty.
Here the lyrics to the song and here’s a link: https://youtu.be/x_H78By-2Yg
As you walk through the shadow
Feel your weight on solid ground
As you tremble in the darkness
In the midst of silent sounds
As you search for your answer
And no answer has been found
May you stand, stand your ground
And when you come to the table
To lay your burdens down
As you wait upon the weary
For whom no rest was found
As you search for to lean on
And find no friend around
May you stand, stand your ground
And may you stand, stand your ground
May you stand, stand your ground
When the last step is before you
And you feel like falling down
May you stand, stand your ground
And as you kneel in the garden
And no one is around
As you raise your hands above you
And from your lips cry out
Oh Father, forgive me
For I could not see through my doubt
May you stand, stand your ground
And may you stand, stand your ground
May you stand, stand your ground
When the last step is before you
And your light is burning out
May you stand, stand your ground
*I am home from the hospital and feeling fine - all treatable! Thanks be to God.
