walking on water.

I have a friend who says that people only find out who they are in moments of desperation, and I think to some extent this is true. It’s easy to be our best selves on our best days, and much harder to be so on the days that are filled with wondering and doubt. It is no surprise to me that I learned about being a person of grace and dignity, of hopefulness and truth, in a season that left me with more questions than answers. And it was God’s supreme wisdom to place me in this space with fellow travelers—people whose very lives hung between the living and the dead—people who were just trying, to start new.

When I’m asked what I do for a living and say that I work with men recovering from homelessness, I always get a variety of the same responses. Usually it’s some form of awe or shock, or a statement that it must be very hard and challenging. And these things are true. It is certainly one of the most difficult jobs I have ever had, but more than this, it has been my greatest teacher. You see, the men I spend my time with don’t need my compassion—they deserve my respect. And they have shown me this, time and time again. They have shown me in their eyes, sure and ready, determined to change things around and start living. They have shown me in the way they walk, their pride and their humility all at once, on display for everyone to see. And they have shown me over and over and over in their love—their love for God, their love for others, their love for me.

They have shown me grace in my times of desperation.

They have seen me struggle to come in, and struggle to get out. They have watched, as I’ve learned and grown and failed and gotten back up again. And they have trusted me with their story. They have come into my office, empty but full, afraid but holding on to promises they are fighting to keep. They have bad days and terrible days and even worse days than that but they keep moving forward. They don’t stop. They don’t let their circumstances determine their worth, they don’t let anyone tell them that they are less than they are. They will not let you pity them.

I asked one of my clients the other day how he’s doing. He responded, with great conviction—I’m walking on water. He said that he didn’t know where life was going to take him and he wasn’t sure about all the chaos that seemed to define his present circumstances—but he was trusting and hoping and looking up. He was believing that even though the waves threatened to take him under almost every day, that he could still walk on water.  

Desperation had come and he had found out who he was.

A person of strength.

And a person who was very afraid.

But he was learning to walk on water.

And life is like that I think, in the sense that it calls forth what we are made of. We can see the storm and go back, or face the waves and move forward. We don’t know if we’ll sink and we don’t know what’s on the other side, but we know that turning around is not an option.

I think the most meaningful thing I have learned from working with these men is that life can be so hard, so uncontrollable, and yet so full of light. And while this light is sometimes a far off beacon and more often than not you can barely see it, we can still walk on water. We can still choose to have faith in the face of insurmountable desperation.

And that even in our desperation, we become who we were waiting to be.

Not all at once and certainly not at first, but if we let it, our storms can be our greatest stories yet.

They can be our defining moments.

But we must look up and out, we must look to that which gives us hope.

Most importantly, we must look to one another.

We cannot walk on water alone.

We need each other, we need a hand to reach out into the depths and pull us back up and look us in the eyes and say YOU CAN DO THIS and YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m still figuring out the questions.

But I’m here.

With you, in the middle of our desperation.

You can hold on to me as I hold on to you.

Look up.

Look out.

Miracles still happen.

And together we can say—

I’m walking on water.