In the last post, I began to talk about the idea of “impasse”, of the stuck places we experience in our life and ministry journey. How do we respond? To what might God be inviting us in such painful seasons?
“The person caught in impasse must find a way to identify, face, live with, and express this suffering. If one cannot speak about one’s affliction in anguish, anger, pain, lament–at least to the God within–one will be destroyed by it or swallowed up by apathy.” (Constance FitzGerald, O.C.D. “Impasse and Dark Night.” Living with Apocalypse: Spiritual Resources for Social Compassion. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984, p. 290.)
We learn in the impasse places of our journey to be emotionally honest with God, with others and with ourselves. For some of us that is easier than for others. (It’s hard for me). Impasse is uncomfortable. Impasse is frustrating. Impasse is testing. FitzGerald offers four words or phrases to describe a process of finding our way through:
1. Identify our suffering. I allow myself to take a good look at the place of spiritual gridlock in which I find myself. I don’t hide from it. I don’t pretend it isn’t there. I don’t try to escape or numb myself through any number of unhelpful vices (lust, gluttony, laziness, etc.). I must stand at the hard place of impasse with my eyes (and heart) open.
2. Face our suffering. Having begun to see just how I feel about this impasse, I stay there in simple (if unfelt) faith in God’s faithfulness. I can’t measure His faithfulness by how rapidly I feel I’m progressing. Sometimes, trusting Him is sitting in a waiting room. I have to wait for Him to call my name. I can’t force His hand. And I must acknowledge how I feel about this to myself, to Him and to others.
3. Live with our suffering. We wish we could decide how long impasse places last, but we can’t. And we have some pretty long impasses recorded in the scriptural record. Between Moses’ youthful act of misguided leadership in killing the Egyptian and his being called back into God’s service at the burning bush is an impasse of decades. The window of Abraham’s receiving an improbable promise and then its eventual fulfillment is an impasse of about a quarter of a century. Few of us will be called to live faithfully in such a waiting room (though it still happens), but we all will find ourselves there at in some season or another.
4. Express our suffering. When facing the frustration of impasse, how do I pray? Do I pray? Do I tell God exactly how I feel—hurt, fearful, angry, discouraged? Do I have friends with whom I can be emotionally frank and who will not feel the need to “fix my faith”?
The irony is that in the midst of impasse, which implies immobility, there must be some sort of movement of faith, communication and emotional expression. When I don’t know where to go or how to proceed outwardly, God may be inviting me to make progress inwardly in ways I haven’t before. I don’t let impasse destroy or paralyze me. God remains as faithful in this place as when I feel I’m running strong and free on His path for me.
In your own places of impasse, how are you responding? Are you trying to numb the discomfort through overeating, seeking illicit pleasure, hiding in entertainment or amusement or any other escape hatches? Or, are you learning to acknowledge where you are, live with God there and learn to let the roots of your faith sink deeper into the God Who has never left you?
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
[...] might God be doing in bringing us to such places? Continue reading in part two of [...]
[...] An impasse often comes with a sense of questioning everyone and everything we’ve ever trusted. We find our trusted sources of security, direction, or motivation questioned and uncertain. We wonder whether our particular denomination or ministry tradition has been completely accurate in its portrayal of God’s character and God’s expectations of us. With the apparent loss of security, we may feel powerless and without protection. Where once I felt like I had everything together, now things may feel like they are falling apart. What might God be doing in bringing us to such places? Click for part two of five [...]