Walking With a Limp

Someone once told me that I have a do or die attitude.

It's true.  I'm a fighter.  If people, under threat, have a "fight or flight" response, mine is always fight. Rich Mullins once sang a song that had the line, "Surrender don't come naturally to me.  I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want than to take what You give that I need."  I've learned to lay down my arms somewhat since I first heard that song, but it's still very true that surrender doesn't come naturally.

It feels so much like giving up.  Giving in.  It feels so much like defeat.

And I have fought way too hard through really tough stuff to give up now.  I have dared to dream too big to give up now.  I have seen too much of what a relationship with Jesus can really look like to give up now.

You see, dreams matter.  Faith matters.  Following Jesus matters.  So when it becomes hard to dream, hard to hold onto faith, hard to follow Jesus, I fight.  I fight tooth and nail.  I would rather rage against God than to simply give up and give in to despair.  Stop dreaming?  Let my faith slide?  Allow my walk with  Jesus to become a pablum affair, bland and inoffensive and utterly boring?  That's what it feels like when I think about surrender.  It really does feel like do or die to me.

But then I think, What if I am fighting God on something he is asking me to surrender?  What if I am trying to hold onto something he is trying to pry from my clenched fingers?  What if I'm fighting him for something I don't really want, and refusing to take what he is giving me that I need?  How do I know when it's time to let go, or time to hang on tightly?  Is this wilfullness or perseverence?  Is this wild and crazy dream really from him after all?  Is the trial a test I need to pass, or a sign to quit struggling?  Do I give up?  Or hang on?

I can't tell.  So I fight, Jacob-like, in desperation, with a growing certainty that I will never win the fight, but terrified to give up too soon and miss the blessing.

And in the end, it's the blessing that matters, not the fight.  It doesn't matter who wins or who loses.  I'm not trying to beat God.  I'm not trying to get my own way.  It's not even the dream that matters anymore, in the end.  It is the blessing of knowing that I would rather spend a dark night of the soul struggling with him over my dreams than to never have a struggle . . . or a dream.  It is the blessing of seeing God face to face, and knowing that he has saved me.  It is the blessing of knowing that the One with whom I struggle is big enough to keep me in my place and strong enough to turn a street scrapper into a dreamer and a disciple who will never give up following him. 

And if this is what it costs, I will walk with a limp.


"Then the man said, 'Let me go, for it is daybreak.' But Jacob replied, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me.'  . . . Then he blessed him there.  So Jacob called the place Peniel, (Peniel means face of God) saying, 'It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared'"  (Genesis 32:26, 29-30).