I’ve known about Connie for over ten years now but I’ve only really come to know her relatively recently. I seem to be in a minority as seemingly everyone knows Connie. For the longest time, she was the wife of my good friend, Rex, a founding member of our Monday morning men’s small discipleship group. Since both Rex and Connie joined our now-branded Little Band of Believers Friday morning prayer group at Susan’s house, Connie’s place in my mindset has evolved. She is the same person I’ve long heard about but with a richer and fuller presence to me.

If you want to understand Christianity, you really need go no further than to be with Rex and Connie. Because Rex by nature is reserved (albeit with one of the best quick wits and impish smiles of anyone I know!), it is easier to write about Connie, so I will. I cannot call Connie reserved.

I bring them (and her) up because to me they represent the fullness of the Gospel … that Good News describing the alternate reality I’ve frequently mentioned. Particularly, what it means to live out on the edge of faith where life can be both terribly daunting, yet full of abundance.

Without question, they have known extreme suffering. I have been around suffering … violence, disease, abuse, heartbreaking loss … and I am close to people who endure suffering. Theirs is the thing of people’s nightmares. Of course, meeting or being with them, you would almost never know it. More on that as we go.

They lost their only child, son Todd, to suicide as a young man 12 years ago. Todd, by all accounts, was a wonderful person who, unfortunately, suffered from mental illness. He was talented, friendly, and committed to improving the world around them. No one who has not lived through it can understand what Rex and Connie endured back then and what they continue to endure.

While I will be off on the specifics, I know the basics about Connie’s disease. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis many years ago and it has become progressively worse. Her body, at just-turned 65, is now very frail and she is wheel-chair bound and extremely dependent upon Rex and others for her basic needs. Daily living is obviously immensely challenging and beyond the scope of most everyone’s normal existence.

The two of them do not hide these outward and inward frailties from others. In fact, they founded an organization called Community Alliance for Healthy Minds as a means to raise awareness and support those who suffer mental illness and face the reality of suicide. Up until very recently, they also served as music ministers at the local church where we meet on Monday mornings.

On the flip side, it would be difficult to imagine a more radiant face than Connie’s. Her smile should be pictured next to a caption that reads, “Full of Delight.” She laughs with spontaneous ease and her eyes dance. Her gaze picks out everyone in the room and one instantly knows that we matter to her. Assuming she reads this, she will probably be embarrassed and insanely quick to point out her many flaws (imperceptible to the rest of us).

When Connie sings (her disease has somewhat diminished her vocal capacity but we should all be so fortunate to sing like she does!), it is from the deepest places in her heart and with the utmost conviction. When she prays aloud or picks a verse from scripture out of her mind, it is with that same conviction. There is nothing perfunctory about what she brings to the table.

While we all are very well aware of the challenges Rex and Connie have faced and continue to face (Rex has a whole passel of his own physical challenges, only magnifying the difficulties of being an around the clock caregiver), we were unused to hearing about Connie’s most recent battle. You see, this was and is a battle of the spirit. This angel of a woman who demonstrates such a deep knowledge and association with God has admitted the presence of dark swings. There is a crack in the edifice of faith. And, it’s in this crack where we delve more deeply into the mystery and wonder of that faith.

Biblically, the outward cry out that announces suffering is often termed a lamentation. In Judeo-Christian language, these lamentations express grief and loss and are frequently directed towards God, not infrequently in anger. These are people who believe but can’t manage that belief at the moment. The lamentations can rise from deep within and burst out with anywhere from simmering to terrible force.

Connie very recently went through such a spell after falling repeatedly, hurting herself even more, and having to continue to come to grips with the state of her disease and body. As we discussed this, she sent me a song or psalm she wrote some years ago, in the format of the psalmists who wrote thousands of years ago. With her permission, I include it here.

A Prayer For Falling (Psalm of Lament)

O Lord, my strength, my Sustaining Arm that rests beneath me at all times.

I have seen Your faithfulness as You have strengthened my weak knees and kept me standing upright in Your presence.

But I have also experienced Your silence as disease has scraped me raw and left my legs flailing in space as my balance weakens and wavers.

 

As I fall over and over again, my heart and soul cry out to You. I breathe Your name but my voice echoes back in a silent void.

Where are Your everlasting arms—the arms that once held me fast and secure, safe and unharmed?

My body is bruised and marked, wounded by Your painful absence.

I weep, confused and frightened. Have I grieved You with some arrogance?

Have I walked proudly and am getting the discipline I deserve?

Where is Your mercy when I stumble? Have You forgotten the way I take?

Do You even see me, laid out on the pavement?

 

I hear the Spirit of God, whispering tenderly through my groanings—

“I see you, stumbling one. I, too, am broken by the fall, the fall of all mankind.

I understand the swelling blows; My head was disfigured by the crown of thorns I wore.

I’ve been knocked down again and again, curses accompanying each blow.

I carried a weighty cross and stumbled up the hill to my own death.

My feet were drained lifeless by two nails.

I fell and fell; I was bruised and marked.

My Father turned a deaf ear; I knew the crucible of His silence for one eternal moment.

 

I was broken to lift you up.

I did all this so that the ground beneath your feet would be stable and secure;

So you would step on the heights with hind’s feet;

So you would walk with feet firmly planted on the Rock.

I stumbled so you could stand.”

 

O God, You know the path I take.

When You have tried me, I will rise up.

I will stand as an Oak of Righteousness,

The planting of the Lord for the display of Your splendor.

AMEN.

You see, this piece I write is not really about Connie. It is about life in what we call the Kingdom of God. I freely admit that many people, without the faith I describe, live with dignity through the most trying of circumstances. But, honestly, the radiance in the midst of suffering, displayed by people like Connie and Susan, is nearly mind-blowing. And, the honesty on full display … of the battle that rages between supernatural joy and physical and emotional pain that may define many a day … is a quality of life that I believe is extremely uncommon.

Of course, Connie and Susan (and the two or three other friends that come quickly to mind) will say that this is what walking with God is like. He is the air they breathe and they delight when it freely flows through their bodies and gasp when it appears to be less attainable. For those of us who may live lives with fewer extremes but who do at least have connection with these kinds of realities, their examples and testimonies are beautiful gifts.

One cannot help but respond with the greatest gift of all. Love.

It seems like it’s de rigueur these days to bash America. Expose our sins. Lift them up so as to decry the faults of the grand experiment. It should come as no surprise but I’m a fan of laying our sins down and asking for forgiveness.

But, I’m also a student of history, something that is in constant flux. I have studied most civilizations, ancient, classical and modern. There is not a one that has not been punctuated by violence and viciousness. Well, at least not a one of any consequence.

As we are flawed, so is human society. We have a choice. Do we value the freedom that allows people to make choices about what to believe? Do we value community that is not enforced but is raised organically?

I’m sorry but utopia is a pipe dream. There is no perfection in human society. Neither anarchy nor strongly centralized government are the solution. After all, people are people and power corrupts. Always.

So, on this day, I celebrate the birth of an idea. An idea that a free people who treasure liberty and, fundamentally, believe that all are equal is worth pausing to give thanks. Today, we don’t criticize and search for fault. Today, we realize that this remarkable occurrence that began well over 200 years ago changed the history of the world.

Tomorrow we will mourn for our nation. For the divisions and strife that seem to daily consume us. But today we are thankful. Thankful for the minds and lives that have carved out this grand experiment. We hope that it continues to flourish and be a beacon for the rest of the world as has been its nature from the beginning. There are some days I shake my head and question what this country is all about. Today, however, I’m blessed and proud to be called an American.

My uncle died recently. We’d returned from four days up in Idyllwild on a Monday afternoon and I woke up to an email sent the night before that he was failing rapidly. The phone call came at 6:45am that he’d passed.

I waited for traffic on the I-15 south to settle a bit before heading down the 30 minutes or so to the house where he’d lived for 50 years and where I’d spent so much of my young life. On the way down, I was playing a canned Spotify playlist of soft piano music and just reflecting when a piece came on entitled, “The Space in Between.” While I didn’t particularly like the selection, it gave me some moments to reflect on the title and how I identify with my own take on the phrase. I finally figured it was time to write about it.

A space in between presupposes two different places with a mediating middle. In other words, two realities with a zone attached to each. In military terms, it’s No Man’s Land or a DMZ (demilitarized zone) that keeps opposing forces separated. In spiritual terms, it’s that place that touches both the natural and the supernatural. Of course, a dogmatic naturist who denies a concept of a supernatural could not relate. But for those of us who believe in, or at least sense, there is an “Other” beyond the state and laws of nature, we have to wonder how (if ever) they intersect.

If we stop for a moment to think about it, don’t we need to confront the possibility or fact that what we’re seeing and experiencing right now is not the whole ball of wax? Of course, science fiction plays with this all of the time. Alternative realities and dimensions. Parallel universes and such. And, there is a strong element in a thing we can loosely call eastern faiths that teach that what we see and experience is mere illusion … a thing we need to break free of in order to escape this reality and merge with the Other.

In other words, with the exception of the pure naturists, there is a whole lot of pull from humans towards recognizing that what we see is not all we get, so to speak.

So, if there’s any truth in this inclination, then we need to ask what is this and what is that? And, how do they connect?

I spent a bunch of years aways back trying to conceive of a situation where this was all illusion. I still have books on my shelves that testify to that. Oh, I can play the mind games that a table is not really a hard object but merely a bunch of molecules (like me) that just happen to be moving very slowly. Similarly, in that line of thinking, the table and I aren’t all that different, except I have consciousness somehow through some cosmic feat. No disrespect to my Zen friends but tackling koans to break through the illusion of this life just didn’t do it in the end. For me, it didn’t answer a number of fundamental questions, including the problem with evil, among other things.

So, I exist in a reality that says what we see and experience is truly real and not an illusion. But, of course, there is another reality that is just as real but far more illusive in the sense it is not so readily available … even impossibly so in its purest form.

When we accept this as fact or at least as highly probable, we have a choice. We can go about living our lives with the knowledge and habits that this is this and that is that … and maybe someday (usually upon death), I can leave this and exist in that. I suspect many people live this way. Or, we can try to engage the “that,” while living in the “this,” usually by some sort of petitioning prayer during tough times or by seeking connection in nature or by meditation and so forth. And, there’s something to be said for these things. I’m a fan.

Or, we can recognize that the “that” is right here, all of the time, in the “this” and we were designed to know and live that at the core of our being.

And, this is where the intersection takes place. Two worlds layered as one. Separate but together.

Some may describe this intersection as the Space in Between. If I were to do so, I’d say it’s not a place but a state of being. I am the Space in Between. I have reflected many times these past dozen years that I have one foot planted in this place and one foot planted in that place. The challenge is how to live that way. It’s a wild ride, to be honest.

Of course, our reasoning and our feelings tug at us constantly. We search. We examine. We may eventually conclude. Then we doubt. We question. We struggle. Answers raise other questions and, frequently, our hearts are heavy. On the other hand, there are countless blessings. We delight, we rejoice, we love. We look around and marvel. At times, the world seems to dance. Our hearts, the other day heavy, now have a lightness or, maybe, an energy that on occasion the body seems unable to contain.

The skeptics, of which I was long a card-carrying member, will reasonably conclude that this is just so much babble. Biochemistry and conditioning, some will suggest.

Diane and I have small decals on the back window of our two cars. Everyone has seen such a decal, some small, some large. It has a little cross intertwined with the letters NOTW, Not of This World. The display is a paean … a sort of proclamation of the reality we ascribe to.

I am in this world but not of it. This fact was never more pronounced or blatantly obvious than when that voice came out of nowhere into the left side of my head and said, “It’s time to come home.” As I’ve said time and time again, I’d been searching for a reality that could ultimately explain all of the nuances, contradictions, explanations and feelings that had been swirling throughout my life. Ultimate explanation is not on everyone’s Top 5 list of things to consider. But, it was on mine.

“Home” of course is where God is and where he called me to be. It is where we are meant to be together. He calls me there all of the time. Sometimes I listen. When I do, and surrender, the veil between “this” and “that” is much thinner. I have written about that before. What is remarkable (as in something to remark about or worth considering) is that to daily walk in this reality is to turn what many people think is reality on its head. Disconcertingly, this is not easy. However, easy is overrated.

With that, I’ll come back to the title of this essay and to my conclusion about a thing such as “the space in between.”

I actually don’t think I live in the space in between … a kind of netherworld which is neither fully one or the other. I think I live in both spaces, whether shuttling back and forth between them or, better yet, seeing each through the lens of the other. And that, I think, is what Jesus was trying to say. If there is a central message to his life and ministry, it is that the reality he called the “Kingdom of God” is present and available in this life. We are called to live fully here and now but in a paradigm that is radically different in nearly all respects from that which normally prevails. Yes, concepts such as we have to lose our lives to gain life are puzzling and even troubling. A few interpret that to mean we have to assume the life of an ascetic, denying even the most simplistic of pleasures. While some may feel called to that, I don’t believe that reflects the message of the Gospel. Yes, we are called to restraint and moderation for all sorts of good reasons. It is not the flesh that is bad. It is what is in our hearts and the things to which we ascribe ultimate value.

I believe it is that recognition that we are both fully fallen and fully saved that is so countercultural … so at odds with normal daily existence. And, to live within that reality, with all of the challenges, joys, sorrows, delights and struggles … to know and walk with God is to have one foot firmly planted in the “this” and the “that.” One day there will be no difference. Thank God.