Truth Prevails

Uncertainty is a state of being. It is an unwelcome, disorienting state of being, to be sure, but a real one nonetheless.

In the before times, when the ground would quake or fear would rise or peace would hide, Jimmy always encouraged me, “Baby, remind yourself of truth.”

He was so wise, my Jimmy Carroll.

And it always helped, that discipline of reflecting, reclaiming, and renewing. Of gathering up what fear had scattered and setting it back in its rightful place.

His exhortation comes to me fresh today, with a palpable pull to do the same. To return to what I know, even as so much of what once felt certain has fallen away.

So I excavate the truths hidden among the ruins and hold them up once more to the light.

Grief has taught me that there is a difference between what I once believed and what I now know.

Adversity cements belief, turning secondhand truths into personal convictions. No longer are they mere concepts, these things I base my life on, but hard-fought, battle-tested certainties.

Consequently, there are some things I know even more surely now, from my vantage point among the rubble.

So, what 𝑑𝑜 I know?

I know that God loves me. Not because I have always felt Him near, or because I finally managed to make sense of the senseless, but because glimpses of His character and facets of His love shine through unmistakably in the life and ministry of His Son.

I know that God is good.

Gooder than good.

As a matter of fact, I am more convinced of His goodness now than at any other point in my life. Not because life has been good to me at every turn, but because suffering crystallizes belief into bedrock when no tangible, external evidence for it can be found.

The result is the quintessential joy unspeakable Scripture promises, the kind that arises when we choose to believe what we have yet to see.

I know that though I am alone in ways I never imagined I would be, I have not once walked alone. God’s presence has not always been evident, but neither has it been in doubt.

He has been Emmanuel to me, both in word and deed.

I know that one day my faith, threadbare as it sometimes is, will be made sight. That the hope I have clung to won’t prove to be mere wishful thinking, but joyful revelation. I will gladly affirm that He is everything I hoped He would be, and even more than I could have imagined.

I know there will be a day when I finally stand before the One I have spent a lifetime pursuing. The One I have trusted in darkness and sought in sorrow. And I will see, up close and personal, that His promises were real.

I know that every prayer whispered, or wept, or flung in despair has been heard and filtered through a love I can’t begin to quantify.

I know that I have been held, even on days when I felt wholly untethered.

Especially then.

These are the truths I go back to. The unshakable knowings that keep my heart in custody when weariness sets in and uncertainty clamors loudest.

But even for all I do know, there are still things I don’t.

I don’t know why some prayers are answered as offered, while others seem not to have been heard at all.

I don’t know why some people get to grow old with the ones they love while others have to say goodbye too soon.

I don’t know why faithfulness alone doesn’t exempt us from devastation.

And I don’t know why God, who could have written a different ending, did not.

I have had to learn to live with unanswered questions.

But one thing I have come to believe is that faith isn’t defined by the absence of uncertainty, anyway. It is simply revealed most vividly in what we do with uncertainty when it comes.

So when doubts arise and questions persist, we avail ourselves of truth.

We remind ourselves of what we know.

And ultimately, we find that we don’t have to know everything to know enough.

Enough to keep walking and trusting and believing. Enough to see our weariness transcended and our doubts transformed.

There will always be things we don’t know.

But these things I do.

And when the ground quakes and fear rises and peace hides, I remember Jimmy’s gentle admonition: “Baby, remind yourself of truth.”

So I do.

Won’t you do the same, beloved?

Because sometimes what we do know is more than enough to carry us through all we don’t.

“Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
~ 𝐏𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝟏:𝟔