September 2005

The Trapeze

            Mike Yaconelli was a favorite writer and person of mine.  Near the time of his death he wrote an article called: “The God of the In-Betweens”.  In it he described a relationship with God like this: “It is like swinging on a trapeze.  Once you have gained the courage to swing, you never want to let go. . .  and then, without warning (around age 50, for me), you look up and see another trapeze swinging towards you, perfectly timed to meet you, and you realize you are being asked to let go and grab onto the other trapeze. You have to release your grip.  You have to reach out.  You have to experience the glorious terror of in betweenness as you disconnect from one and reach for the other.

            This past year has been a time of letting go, one finger at a time, and these last few weeks have been a terrifying weightlessness, a wait-lessness, a paralyzing stretch for the unknown.  I haven't reached the other bar yet.  I am somewhere in between, but I can tell you this: my heart is filled with an exhilaration, an anxious anticipation that just as I get to the other bar, I will not grasp it, but I will instead be grasped by the hand of Jesus. . .  I can hardly wait.” 

            Wow!  What a great way to see life.  It is easy to love God and live joyously when everything is going well and we are in control.  It is exhilarating to swing on the trapeze.  But then God frightens us as we see him coming toward us and calling us to let go of our tight grip and fly.  “But I might fall! I may be seriously hurt or even killed.  I may not be able to grab on to the One coming to meet me.”  It has not occurred to me that it is not up to me to grab him, but that he will grab me.  I don’t have to hold on, because he will hold on to me.  The hard part is the in-between time — the time between when I let go and God takes hold of me.  There is that uncertain time when I am holding onto nothing.  I am simply flying.  It feels like a free-fall.  How do I know I will be caught when I am suspended only by air?  Right now there may be no one holding on, including me.  I am comfortable when I am in control or when there are plenty of support systems in place, but what about when I let go of all that and no one is holding on?  What then?  It is the in-between time. 

            It is in the in-between times that we learn to trust.  God is asking us to do something that we have never experienced before: a loss of a relationship, a loss of work, an illness, the threat of death, the waywardness of a child, the uncertainty of life.  There is no safety net.  It is terrifying, but there is Someone headed toward us, and his arrival is perfectly timed.  All he asks us to do is let go. 

Swinging,

Rod