Trust Fall

 

I was thinking this morning of something I used to do.

From time to time, usually in the confined space of our galley kitchen, when I was standing casually in front of Dave either cooking or talking or generally doing something else, I would collapse. I'd just let go limp and fall to see whether he could catch me before I reached the floor. 

It was a test of some kind, I guess, because we both knew I had trust issues, like a lot of us do. It's hard to relinquish control, after all. We work so hard to get it and when we do, don't want to let go. After all, who knows what would happen if we actually fell? It's true. 

Of course, we all know that whatever control we think we have is an illusion. We are, in the end, all subject to forces way beyond our control, but who wants to admit that, much less live it? 

But you know what I learned? It's freeing. It feels absolutely fabulous to the point that, even if I actually fell, it wouldn't matter. It would be absolutely worth that one moment of freefall. 

In time, I came to understand that the trust fall thing was just a metaphor for something else. What I really wanted wasn't just that single moment of freedom, but an assurance that there existed somewhere a kind of erasure when the bounds of what divided me from the rest of the created world, even from God Himself, slipped away. 

It was about more than trust.

It was about a momentary union with the infinite, a kind of flight that released me from all the strings I was trying to hold, all the future I was trying to weave, all the security I was trying to purchase with the precious energy of my life. We can't do it, though, and if we live long enough, we realize that. Eventually, what we work so hard building melts away in a single moment beyond our control.

That's why, I think, Jesus told us to build up treasures in heaven. He didn't mean not to live our life, but to live it with what really lasts in mind. Circumstances twist and turn, but the energy we invest in building up God's treasures, the world and people He made, well, that lasts. It shatters the boundaries that separate us not only from each other, but from Him.

I don't intend to erect or fortify one more barrier in this world. I have little time and no constructive energy for it. And, when I remember what it feels like to trust that God really does intend the best for every one of His creatures, I can fall into His arms with ease.

It's reassuring to remember, too, that He reinforced that thought in the last thing I was able to do for Dave while he lived - to catch him, to keep him from falling when he was too weak to stand on his own, and to tell him, "Don't worry. I've got you." He had done it so often for me, never failing to make the catch. Of course, all those catches were illusions, too. In the end, it was God doing the catching every time. 

Photo courtesy of Maestri Gallery