what 2020 has taught me about clarity
It was December 2019.
I had been in counseling for 2 months and we had just begun our EMDR sessions.
For those unfamiliar, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy treatment designed to alleviate the distress linked to traumatic memories. Most of the trauma we were exploring involved memories from when I was 3 & 4 years old.
IE Old, suppressed memories that had created 25+ years worth of improper thinking patterns and lies I believed about myself, others and various circumstances.
Cool, cool, cool.
It was around this time in my life I was growing more and more uncomfortable with my 9-5 job. 5 years prior it was THE DREAM, but began to grow stale as I was beginning to blossom into something new. Completely unbeknownst to me at the time.
As I questioned my therapist about the “what I should do’s” and “where I should go’s,” she took it deeper and we explored
the unknown.
The unknown.
When you hear it,
think of it,
approach it,
what comes to mind?
For much of my life, perhaps all of it up until that point, the unknown represented a doorway leading to a dark, terrifying, cloudy region of space. If I didn’t know what it was going to look like or turn out to be, it must be “bad.”
But I also grew up sitting in pews listening to the thousands upon thousands of ways you can “trust the Lord.”
In one hand I was holding the belief that the unknown is dreadful, and in the other hand I was holding the belief that I have to put my trust in the Lord. AKA the One who asks us to step into the unknown daily.
We started unpacking why I felt it, unfair, that God would ask me to enter into having “faith like a child” when my childhood was robbed by shame and anxiety and all things worrisome post-early-childhood trauma.
Jesus asks us to have “faith like a child.”
Some children are wide eyed and curious. Rather than waiting for an adventure, they create it. The unknown is an exciting playground full of mystery to unlock.
Other children experience trauma.
And the wide eyed wonder falls fast asleep.
When trauma occurs, the unknown, the moments where we hand control over to someone else, it’s scary.
It’s dark.
It’s a risk, not an adventure.
But this is also a lie.
What if the unknown is vibrant?
What if it is exciting?
What if it’s full of joy and adventure?
I had finally come to a point in therapy where I felt confident approaching the unknown.
And then, Covid.
I had stumbled into this mixture of deep grief as the world at large was so collectively lost and scared, while simultaneously feeling some sense of relief as everyone in my community and outward were now processing what it’s like to enter into the unknown along with me.
I was no longer “alone” in my journey.
A few weeks into March 2020 I would frequently hear prayers filled with the words “peace” and “clarity” being used almost synonymously.
I noticed they’d spill out of my own mouth, too.
It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a psychic who used these words to market their tarot card readings that I stopped abruptly at a halt and asked myself;
“what is peace
what is clarity
are they as synonymous as our culture perceives them to be
and why are we all so desperate for it?”
Clarity: the quality of being coherent and intelligible
The clearest definition of peace that I can find from a Biblical perspective comes from the Hebrew word “shalom” meaning complete, wholeness. The pictographic symbols for the word shalom (shin, lamed, viv, mem) read: “Destroy the authority that binds to chaos.”
Well, frick.
I’ve always thought of peace as the absence of conflict, but when I read things like,
Philippians 4:6-7
“Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life, then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will make the answers known to you through Jesus Christ.”
I realise that supernatural peace which transcends understanding actually comes with tension and conflict. There’s a tension in wanting to follow human wisdom and logic, but as God asks us to step into the unknown, we oftentimes must leave logic and intellect behind.
When I flip through the scriptures seeking out the term “clarity”
I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
And wherever I find the term “peace” it’s often followed by some off-the-wall requests from God to man.
I think of Abraham.
A man who left his family to journey into undesignated land where he was promised to bear many children and be the founder of a new nation. When I read over his story (Genesis 12-25) and many others who followed God (Jacob, Moses, Esther, David, Paul, etc etc etc) as I flip through these scriptures I find, not one, account of “clarity.” I never seem to find a point where these faith-filled humans reflect and think “ah, that made so much sense.”
I only find, time after time,
adventure into the unknown,
boldly pushing past the fog,
failure paired with grace,
and copious amounts of faith and trust.
If Papa is everywhere, He’s in our past, our present and our future.
He’s on the other side of the open doorway into the unknown.
And if He’s in that open doorway,
He’s already a few steps ahead along the path of the unknown.
It’s not a region of space filled with void. It’s a Garden filled with joy and love and peace.
The mystery is an adventure.
I don’t have to beg for clarity.
I don’t want that, anymore, anyway.
I want big faith.
I want provision.
I want God’s promises over my life.
I can feel safe.
even in the unknown.
Because He’s already explored those waters and conquered that territory.
