“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.” -Ernest Hemingway
It’s been years now since I scrawled that quote on a page in an old journal, but I can still remember how it felt. Aching. Empty. Lonely. Cold.
I’d found the quote in a church, printed on brightly colored paper, surrounded by words promising hope. Words promising that a relationship with Jesus would set me free from Hemingway’s vacuum. And instead of giving me hope, these words terrified me. I already had a relationship with Jesus, but still the nagging emptiness tortured my soul.
I felt so very far from God, trying desperately to close that gap separating my heart from His. Reaching, grasping, hoping for a spark of life to pierce the clouds filling my mind and my heart. Praying and worshiping and ministering, but dying on the inside. Absolutely dying.
“Jesus is the answer!” they said, but I already knew that and still I was trapped in a cold, lonely vacuum with no batteries or current. I didn’t need answers. I needed, desperately, life.
So I tried harder.
I devoured chapter after chapter of the Bible, getting up early and reading its pages before my eyes were really open, searching for life. I prayed, begging God to show me what I had to do to get to Him. I told other people about the hope found in Jesus, about how He offered life more abundantly, about how they could “get saved.” And still I felt as empty as a radio tube with no spark. Absolutely dying.
What if this is as good as it gets? My smile was fake. (I couldn’t help but wonder – if my smile was fake was anyone’s real?) My handshake was fake too. Firm and confident, just the way I’d practiced. I could say all the right words without even thinking, without even hearing them anymore. I could sell you a religion that was failing me. I was terrified. Terrified, and absolutely dying.
I truly believed that Jesus was the answer, that a relationship with Him would give me life more abundantly. I never doubted that. But when you have that, when you have Jesus and the Bible and all the answers and you look in the mirror and are forced to admit to yourself that you’re as lonely as a vacuum tube with no current, then what? I longed for life, abundant life. Something more than words on a page, more than old hymns echoing off the walls of a church. I needed something more than the daily struggle to convince myself that I was alive and free.
And so a prayer started to form deep inside my heart. Deep beneath my systematic theology and my spiritual disciplines and my moral purity, a whispered plea for life. A desire for freedom that would not be silenced. A spark in the vacuum. A stubborn hope.
Image: 5bodyblade
I’m reading A PLACE FOR WEAKNESS right now, and it speaks to our need to see Christianity as a “solution” when it really isn’t. It’s a change of our status before God, not some all-purpose band-aid, and even when some things become easier with Christ, it doesn’t mean that’s the way all things will be.
This is my language, knowing that the world and my faith aren’t neat and tidy (and that I will always struggle with understanding both), knowing I haven’t somehow failed because I haven’t gotten some quick fix in life.
Boy, have I been there. I think many people have but not all of us admit to it. So glad you’re sharing this part of your story, Micah.
Even though it was well into my “walk with Christ” as it were, I feel like this part really is the “Once upon a time…” of it all.
Micah, you left me wanting to read more! Thank you for sharing the nitty-gritty part of serving God. It’s what we’re all looking for, but not talking about. It’s refreshing to find someone else who’s willing to get real.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Yes, I’ve been there. We sell Christianity as a fix it, and it isn’t. Though we believe we’ve found the truth the vacuum is a hard place to be.
A slightly less depressing quote I’ve clung to in those times:
“Tho’ hope is frail it’s hard to kill.”
~When You Believe
Yes. And we are saved by hope.
So what’s the end of the story?
Tell us, now you know you know you know you’re loved and everything’s filled up? Or it was just a matter of giving up – letting go – stopping striving and then Jesus met you in that deep place? Or…. any one of the offered solutions by well meaning but apparently uncomprehending friends who leave you thinking you are the only one…
So I keep hoping, keep praying, keep seeking, keep working, keep stepping out, keep looking harder and harder for you Jesus… and I think I’m starting to notice you next to the emptiness, not removing it but walking alongside it? But I’m scared, how long can I keep this up, will I give up one day even though I know this is the answer!?!?!
I love Jesus’ prayer on the cross, and it’s one I’ve prayed many times when I didn’t know what else to say: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Even when we give up, He won’t. It doesn’t scare Him or offend Him when we pray “Dear God, if you’re real…” The story doesn’t end, I think. It keeps going, in and out of light and shadow, and when we look back we realize He was in it all.
I have prayed this scripture many times:
“a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench…” Isaiah 42:3
So good. One of my favorites is “I am still confident of this, I will see the Lord in the land of the living…”
As a wannabe believer, I guess I’d not seriously considered the fact that everything does not flow naturally just because oh are a believer. Oh sure, I’ve heard of a ‘crisis of faith’ but my vision of this didn’t include a daily struggle.
I think that deep down I’d always assumed that finding faith was a magical panacea Dammit!
Great story- thanks.
Ps- the trying harder bit, I totally get.
Anybody who tells you that being a believer makes everything perfect is lying. Faith is defined by struggle, I think. Theres a verse in the Bible that says something like “If we could see what we were hoping for, it wouldn’t be hope, would it?” I think it is a daily struggle, for sure. For me, faith doesn’t give me all the answers, but it gives me a larger story to be a part of.
What a beautiful, honest and hopeful piece, Micah. Thank you. I am just exhausted by too much happy-clappy Christianity, and formulaic-10 steps-to-perfect-faith doggerel. Life is more complicated than that – more incredibly beautiful AND more incredibly awful than any 10 steps to anything. A lot of the time it’s barely one step. . . in front of another, hanging onto the hem of a garment we hope is there. You have put good words around this important truth and I thank you for each one.
Jesus IS the answer, but I never really understood the full implication of that fact until I listened closely to the “if I Were a Rich Man” song in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” I call it my Tevia moment.