Falling

I grew up in a Christian family, a family made up of very broken people, but sincere believers nonetheless. I also grew up understanding that I had to make my faith my own and to do so I needed to question and doubt and figure out my ideas of life and God and faith myself. So I grew up loving God and the idea of living my life within him, full of questions and doubts and grace and love. I also grew up with enough ugliness in my life to soften the supercilious bend that my faith could have taken and with enough kindness to protect me from complete cynicism.
We were rolling merrily along, my faith and I, until we fell into a really, deep pit – one of those scary ones that seem to have no bottom and are full of the terrible smell of rotting happiness. I don’t remember all of the details as a I fell down that pit like Alice in Wonderland, but I do remember that there was a lot of praying, a lot of crying, a lot of disbelief that I was going where I was, and a lot of digging in my nails and kicking my heals at the sides as I fell.
Eventually, I landed. It was pretty messy. My nails were broken and bleeding, my face was covered in mud and streaked with tears and snot and blood and the bruises and gashes that covered my body looked life threatening to me. And of course the aforementioned smell. Nothing smells quite so badly as squashed happiness rotting alongside chunks of peace and love.
I looked around that almost black pit and threw-up in a corner. God held my hair and patted me on the back.
“This really sucks,” I said.
God nodded.
“No, I mean this is shit,” I said.
“Yeah,” God said. “I know.”
I breathed in the terrible air that tasted like mothballs and said, “I don’t think I can survive this.”
“Yeah, you can Ang,” God said.
And then we cried.
I cried, he cried, there were a lot of Kleenexes exchanged, some angry words on my part, I think I might of hit him once or twice, there was some screaming and a few times where he seemed to pull a disappearing act on me, and then after all of that, it got really quiet.
I looked at God. He had a fat lip and a black eye. He was pretty messy too.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said.
“That’s O.K.”, he said, “I’ll live.”
“So, now what?” I asked.
“Maybe we should just sit for a while,” he said.
And who am I to argue with God? So we sat for a while. In fact we’re still sitting but every once in a while God shows up with shovels and we start digging for a bit, but I get tired pretty quickly and it’s slow going. I keep hoping that one day he’ll show up with a ladder, but he’s not really a knight in shining armour sort of guy, so I’m not holding my breath, which is good, because I’ve begun to notice that the air is starting to smell a little better.