Writing to the sound of the mating call of foxes
literally
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5th March 2023
It’s 2.35am as I begin typing this.
I’ve been in bed since 11pm. This will be the 3rd day in a row where I’ve been tired enough to go to bed at my usual time, then before I even have time to comprehend what’s happening, I’m wide awake, Christian worship music is on and I’m crying my eyes out at the the words that I’m listening to. The rest of the house is fast asleep and the only sound that’s disturbing the silence is the mating call of the foxes outside.
There’s a line I’ve said to friends over text and through sad voice notes this week, “When it rains, it really f*cking pours.”
What prompted me to write this week’s post was because it’s been dawning on me recently just how hard it is to be a Christian.
I know, I know, there are lots more pressing things going on in the world right now than to be reading me whinging about the hardships of being “religious”, or “part of the God squad” or whatever other phrase you might tie to Christianity..
When I’m asked about my faith, which I often am, I tend to start with the origin story of how it’s become such a huge part of my life. I usually speed through an abridged version of being dragged up as a Catholic, finding God at university, yada yada yada.
It’s only been 9-ish years and I don’t know if I’d still be called a baby Christian but the last few years have definitely felt like I’ve been teething.
What I’ve been realising is that being a Christian is really flippin’ easy when things are going well. I can rock up to a church service on Sunday and I can belt out those worship songs, my hands held up like I’m at a gig and I can feel the energy in the room. I can drink the coffee, eat the pastries and chat happily to people around me, exchanging the niceties that people do in that situation, happy as larry.
Recently those times have been few and far between.
I will caveat this next little bit by saying that I love having a relationship with Jesus. Sure, there are a growing number of legalistic things about The Church as a whole that I am not a fan of but having a faith has changed me as a person in ways that I’m so thankful for.
But the hard times, really are hard.
I often hear it referred to as the desert place. What that means is having moments, long or short, of doubts where you feel abandoned by God and where faith is often questioned. It’s a dry, desolate time where things feel hopeless and desperate and quite frankly, pretty joyless and shitty. It can feel like rock bottom.
I really wish that we all spoke more about just how often these moments happen. Better yet, I wish I expected more of them because they always feel like unfair surprises when they occur.
I’m coming to you this week at the tail-end of what I can only describe as “shit hitting the fan” in the most impressive way possible. In a text to a friend, I said “If this was a film, this week would have been the inciting incident.” (inciting incident : an event or a moment towards the beginning of a film or a story that sets the main character up to leave their old status quo behind and go on a journey.)
This week, I have felt hopeless, out of control, really low and so apathetic. Over the last 9 years, I’ve collected pockets of time in my memory where I can see the miraculous things that have happened to me, the change of courses that at the time were painful but in hindsight have been beautiful blessings, I’ve seen people healed from illnesses and I’ve seen and experienced supernatural occurrences that have made my faith so strong. But I’ve also seen and experienced the opposite of that too. And I’ve seen people try to explain away the suffering and hurt that comes with those moments when you’re hoping for God to pull through and He doesn’t. It really sucks and people can come at you with all of their beautiful packaged acronyms and sayings, but it’s not going to magically solve what you’ve got going on. If anything, it will make you less likely to tell them when something is happening and more likely to pretend that everything is OK even when it isn’t.
I wish that someone had pulled me to one side when I first became a Christian and gently let me know just how hard it would be. It’s easy to say that I trust God when the trust isn’t being tested by the things going on in life. If you know me in person then you already know just how much I suck at small talk and how much I like getting to the deep nitty gritty stuff of what’s really going on with my loved ones.
I view my relationship with God in the same way.
My conversations with God are often… gnarly and this week they’ve been exactly that. I’ve been envious of those people in the Bible who had encounters where they were told exactly what to do and what was going to come in the future. It would be really brilliant to get a weekly update on my life, letting me know what was going to be in store for me and my loved ones. Maybe even a template that I could rewrite when my friends needed answers as to why God hasn’t pulled through for them despite all of their praying and fasting and bible reading and church going and all of the other things. But life isn’t like that for anyone and it’s not like that for Christians either.
This isn’t a promo to anyone to “give Christianity a go.” It’s more of a warning that if you do, be more prepared than I have been for when you have doubts.
There’s no bespoke manual that arrives as soon as you become a Christian with a step by step guide of what’s going to happen in the rest of your life. There’s no protection from the shit things that happen, they will still happen and the waves of emotions that come with being human will all still be things that you have to work through and deal with. It won’t be any easier to tolerate that one person at work who gets on your last nerve on a daily basis. You won’t miraculously become uber spiritual, walking around with a radiant glow. Why not? Because we’re human and not supernatural. Humans are messy. I’m messy. My prayers are messy and shouty and sometimes a bit swear-y. So is my life.
The mating call of foxes that has filled the street the whole time that I’ve been writing this is a stark reminder that love doesn’t always come across pretty. If you’ve never heard a fox's mating call then you should head on over to YouTube right now. What you will discover is that it’s quite a harrowing, ugly sound. Despite its unnerving tone, it’s the sound of new life. Without it, new baby cubs would cease to exist and the fox population would die out. (I’m sure that’s not scientifically accurate but I’m not a scientist so do me a solid and humour me for the sake of my point.)
And when I’m sitting up at 3am with tears streaming down my face, acknowledging the mess that’s consuming my thoughts whilst also having a strong urge to play worship music, it doesn’t solve everything but it does remind me of the why. It’s the hope that things will get better somehow even though I can’t see it. It’s an anchor and the persuasion needed to continue to try. To relentlessly and radically love people and to continuously show up in whatever state I’m in, being brutally honest about the open wounds I’ve got going on without diluting it down. To be there for people through the good and the bad. And to somehow continue to trust that God hasn’t left me and to continue to believe that He’s real.
That’s what stubbornly keeps me from giving up on a daily basis.
Having doubts about faith can feel ugly to face, yet it is my experience that often once I get through the parts that are unnerving me, there’s some form of new life waiting on the other side.
Faith is spelt doubt.
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Thanks for writing Nessa, it's so important to talk about the tough/messy/doubting times. The best piece of advice that someone ever gave me was that God wants communication with us - even when it's just: 'What the heck? Everything sucks' (or something more poetic). This post gave me a really needed moment to reflect on my position right now. I've been outside of a church for probably half a year as we prepared to move, it all fell through, and we found somewhere new to live and I feel so disconnected. I don't even know which box my Bible is packed in, let alone when I last opened it... But I'm holding on that my faith is still there even when everything else is stripped back, some way some how. Sending love
A lovely walk through the adaptogen of fall. Thank you