I’d like to turn the clock back twenty years. I didn’t anticipate that the fifth decade of my life would include so much loss. Two funerals a month apart for friends who died from cancer. A relative having a diagnostic test this very hour to determine if she too has been stricken with the disease. My father’s sudden accident and new life in a nursing home.

I now brace myself when the phone rings and fight off low grade anxiety when I climb into the car. I can actually feel myself starting to shut down and go into a self-imposed relational and spiritual coma. I’m not exactly sure why I battle to stay in relationship with God and others when life gets overwhelming but I know I’m not alone in this default behavior.

After Adam and Eve blew it, they imagine it’s somehow prudent to camouflage themselves and hide from their Father among the bushes. Though tactically absurd, I get the impulse behind their choice. We opt for hiding over allowing ourselves to be vulnerably exposed for many reasons, but I think these might be the top two: pride and fear.

My pride tells me not to fall apart in front of others. There’s a very real humiliation factor of not having answers, of dwelling in sadness a bit longer than is socially acceptable, and of entertaining doubts. I have to consciously fight against the impulse to present well and instead allow others to see me unraveled.

Where pride prevents me from seeing myself accurately, fear obscures God’s true nature. If we have not consistently experienced God’s passionate love for us, we tend to fear Him when things go poorly. When God asks us the same question that He asked Adam and Eve—Where are you?—we imagine an enraged parent rather than a heartbroken father who longs to scoop us up and comfort us. Our residual feelings of guilt, insecurity, or shame may lead us to believe that God is searching for us primarily to accuse and/or punish. (In the case of Adam and Eve, perhaps they had sufficient reason to fear God since they had disobeyed his commands.)

Author Helen Cepero suggests viewing God’s question from a perspective which cuts through our pride and fear. She writes in Journaling as a Spiritual Practice, “The question ‘[Where are you?]’ echoes throughout the Old Testament and then reverberates again and again in the New Testament.” Those three words could be asked of Moses after he murdered the Egyptian and fled into the desert, Jonah after he refused God’s sacred assignment and found himself in the belly of the whale, and the disciples when they abandoned Jesus at His crucifixion. In each case, there was either an obvious misstep or a combination of fear and overwhelm, followed by a hasty departure.
    
Our DNA might incline us to respond like these biblical figures, but when we do, we misconstrue God’s intentions. Cepero continues, “[Where are you?] is not some sort of celestial attempt to determine our location. Instead, it seems to arise out of the longing of God’s own heart. It is a question that invites us to be alert to God’s presence and alive to God’s love, wherever we are.”

This perspective does not discount God’s call to holiness. Sometimes there are serious repercussions if we fail to heed His commands. But surely, Scripture intentionally offers us sufficient examples which demonstrate the Father’s patient perseverance and willingness to offer us second—and third—chances.

Moses not only found his wife during his self-imposed exile but also received an offer to partner with God in saving his people. The whale did not digest Jonah but rather regurgitated him, giving the reluctant prophet another opportunity to obey. And though the disciples cluelessly returned to their fishing boats after Jesus’ death, the Messiah sought them out not to reprimand them but to fellowship with them over a meal.
    
I cannot go back to the more carefree and healthy days as a thirty year old. As I was finishing this piece, my cousin called to tell me that her father had passed away in the early hours of the morning. Though there is no pause button or escape hatch to prevent further losses, as a follower of Christ, I can neither avoid the inevitable pain nor allow my heart to calcify. I will only be able to live courageously and vulnerably when I expect more of my limitless God and less of my limited self.

This is a remix of an article originally published in Relevant Magazine, November of 2013.

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