I recently finished a book called Blessed are the Misfits. I started it in…September? October? I tend to take my time with books (and start/stop seven others in the interim). It’s written by a Christian radio personality named Brant Hansen, a quirky, on-the-spectrum goofball and also one of the wisest guys I follow. His podcast inspires me daily. I hope to meet him one day.
His most recent book centers on introverts and doubters and non-spirituals and basically anyone who doesn’t fit into a neat, Christian box. I checked myself in a lot of the boxes of the chapters he penned.
One chapter focused on those of us whose lives and stories remain inconclusive. We know, we hope, in an ultimate conclusion, of course — but what of the roads with numerous dead-ends on this side of Paradise?
Brant talks about his childhood friend who got run over by a bus. And a Jesus-following, Jesus-loving ministry leader who later killed himself in a motel.
What on earth was the point to either of those stories? What good was God doing there?
Where was God then? Where is he now?
I look back at my life over the last year, and I find myself asking, pleading with God over so much . . .
Friendships on the brink or pushed fully over.
Gargantuan calls to ministry.
A stubborn vision for a 50-year community.
And yet no answers on this road filled with potholes and plotholes.
Where is God? Where is the resolution?
In this particular chapter, Brant recounts a story about a childhood Mozart. The story goes that Teen Mozart lay in his bed one night when he heard a neighbor playing the piano. He listened to every twist and turn of the tune — until the neighbor stepped away from the piano, leaving the last C untapped.
Teen Mozart waited. In the silence of his bedroom. Until Teen Mozart could stand it no longer.
He had to hear the last chord.
And so Teen Mozart raced downstairs to the family piano and struck it himself. Then returned to bed.
I’m realizing that resolution or the lack thereof is not some otherhumanly concept. I know we all want it, need it to some degree. A conclusive reason for any and every horrible thing.
Hurricanes. Premature death. Yet another Tom Brady Super Bowl.
As a Four on the Enneagram, I do believe I long for redemption — want to aid to the effort — more than most. Yearn for it exponentially with every emotion that swallows me.
I want to do something about all this hurt. I see the brokenness of this world, certainly the brokenness in me, and I want to spin any and all suffering like Rumplestiltskin into gold.
It’s why I write. It’s why I blog. It’s why I cofounded YOB. It’s why I record a monthly podcast. It’s why I tell stories. Real-life stories of lack and loss and the gritty awful.
Sometimes, if nothing else, the story itself provides — at least in some minute part — resolution.
Writing about my lonesome sexuality and hearing that a 16-year-old across the country resonates. Resolution.
Talking about my lack of masculinity on a podcast with fellow brothers who nod along. Resolution.
I don’t know where this particular tune in time is taking me. Don’t have any idea. I hear a lot of silence right now. Resolution feels far off.
The last note lingers, and I want to hear the final sound.
Want God so desperately to provide for these visions he’s injected into my heart. A vision of ministry and community and disciple-making. A vision of redemptive storytelling — personally, collaboratively.
At what point do I remain in my bed like a teenage Mozart, awaiting some supernatural sound —
— and at what point do I race downstairs to strike the last key?
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