In what do you put your faith?

I woke up about 3:30am to see a text message on my phone that I had not noticed before I went to bed.  As a general rule I don’t get up and look at my phone in the middle of the night but sometimes I glance to make sure that it is not something urgent.  My phone is on silent so if I don’t get up to go to the restroom or stretch or straighten my pajamas in the wee hours I would not know that I had been contacted. 

The text was from a former coworker, a friend and a fellow Christian. It simply read, “how did you get the courage to leave”.  It took all I had to lay the phone down.  I wanted to address it right then.  I wanted to fight the fight.  I wanted to lift my friend up in encouragement and boldness.  I wanted to help them see what I saw.  Instead I laid the phone down, went to the bathroom and returned to bed.  I couldn’t sleep so I responded briefly and laid the phone face down on the bedside table.

Let me tell you a story.  I will give you the abbreviated version for two reasons.  1. It’s a long story and 2.  I may have misplaced some of the details through the years. 

That guy I live with and I had determined that we were able to cut a tree that was in our yard.  Specifically a large sweetgum tree that was growing only feet from our house. Beyond the fact that we were not lumberjacks by trade, we simply did not have the tools for such a project.  We had a smaller than necessary chainsaw and a ski rope (we live on the lake, ski ropes are a staple).  After careful consideration that guy I live with determines that by applying pressure through a ski rope tied to another tree away from the house and a strategic wedge cut on the same side of the tree, we could control the fall of this fifty year old tree. 

Here’s where the abbreviation starts.  Things didn’t go the way we anticipated.  Our intelligent planning, careful predictions and great intentions left us in a panic and a monstrous tree threatening to collapse not only our home but one of the neighbor’s out buildings.  Now at this time our boys were young.  Tyler was likely ten, Levi maybe 6 and Stacey was only 2 or 3 years old.  We were in a situation.  The boys were no longer safe in the house.  I had to bring them outside, make sure they were a safe distance from whatever destruction was about to ensue, try to help that guy I live with manage ropes and chains and watch the boys.  I was not prepared for any of this.  It got scary.  

Fast forward to the end.  We had an old Ford Bronco that barely ran on its best days. Attached at the Bronco’s hitch we had the ski rope and chains that were also attached to the tree.  I am in the drivers seat.  My only instructions were, “at my word, go!” That guy I live with was hanging on the tight rope between the truck and the tree hoping to be enough downward force to redirect the tree.  Then he screams, “go!”  Chug, chug, chug.  The Bronco goes.  The tree fell hard to the ground barely missing the back of the Bronco.  That guy I live with ran to escape the falling hardwood.  

My first reaction is to take a quick inventory.  Are the boys safe?  I had told them to play on the old boat trailer sitting in the yard.  “Do not get off this boat trailer,” I remember telling them sternly.  Levi and Stacey are floating around the rails of the trailer without a care or concern for what was happening around them.  Trees are falling, Broncos that are never driven are suddenly in the backyard, ski ropes and chains and ladders and saws; as if they had not noticed.  They were innocently trusting.

But Tyler wasn’t with them.  He was supposed to be helping me watch them.  He was the oldest and old enough to know what grave danger they could be in.  He was aware of the panic in my voice when I brought them out of the house.  He understood this was not just another day in the lake life.  

Then I see him.  He was in the neighbor’s flower bed.  In the irises that bloom in early spring my child was kneeling before God.  

  

I responded to my friends midnight text, “For me it wasn’t courage, it was faith.”

When my courage fails me, when my intellect is insufficient, when my skills are lacking, and my tools  don’t qualify me, God is faithful.