Scarred

I wish that I could say I was the sort of person who had an unshakeable, steadfast kind of faith, but I’m not.  That might be one of the reasons I write this blog—because I’m trying to explain my faith to myself in a way that maybe the Spirit can use to communicate with my soul.  My faith is a battered and broken one, but it is the only faith that I have.  So I guess that makes it mine.

If you were to look at my face, you might see an appropriate visual representation of what my faith looks like.  My nose is crooked, my ears are cauliflowered, my jaw clicks when I open it to eat a cheeseburger, and there’s nothing I can do to hide the scars that highlight my cheekbones.  I imagine that, if one could see my faith, my faith would look an awful lot like my face.  And because my battered faith is the only faith I have, it is the faith that I must  contend with.

I wonder if that means I’ve earned it…

Would an unchallenged faith actually be a faith at all?  I honestly don’t know.  I don’t know that faith can be owned if it’s never truly challenged.  But I don’t know anybody else’s faith.  I only know mine.

Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves. Or do you yourselves not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless you fail the test.  (2 Corinthians 13:5)

I recently had a very strange experience.  I was attending a combat sports event (a 2-day seminar) and ran into an old friend.  He’s not the kind of friend that I see often.  I met him years ago when we were fighting on the same card—I was an older fighter at the end of his career and he was young and on his way up.  We crossed paths a few more times on similar events.

While we were at this event we ended up working together a lot.  On one of the breaks he started talking to me about the old days, about the days when he was helping train one of his team’s fighters for a fight against me.  I guess, in those years ago, he was kind of the enemy.  He was working with my opponent.

“Joel,” he told me, “you were a legend.  We were truly scared of you.  We were preparing him for the toughest fight of his life.  We respected you so much.”

I’m not going to lie.  I walked away from that conversation trying to keep the visible tears out of my eyes while I was still hanging out with all the tough fighters.  I had to wait until I was on the way home in my truck to finally cry.  For some reason his admiration absolutely wrecked me.  My life has been in a weird space of late and, for some reason, those words pierced me in a way I didn’t know was possible.

I never thought that much of myself as a fighter.  The only thing that sustained me was my absolute stubbornness and unwillingness to quit.  My first few fights really didn’t go that well.  In fact they went terribly.

My first fight set a world record for the worst loss in MMA history at the time.  I managed to win my second fight, but my face looked like it had been hit several times with an impact weapon.  My next two fights were hard losses, and the source of two of the scars I still carry to this day—one over my right cheekbone and one on my left orbital.

I was an active duty soldier at that time in my life.  I still remember the night that my squad leader, a sergeant I truly loved, looked at me and asked, “Joel, are you sure this is something you want to keep doing?”

Yes, I wanted to keep doing it.  Or maybe I didn’t.  I didn’t always love it.  Sometimes I hated it.  But I had to keep doing it.  I couldn’t make myself stop.

I developed a reputation as being a “tough” fighter.  I could take a beating and keep going.  I started winning some fights after that.  I had made some training changes and started working with new coaches.  I got better and started fighting tougher opponents.  I started headlining shows. 

But I never thought that much of myself.  I took every loss as a personal affront to my skill.  I sulked with every defeat and injury then just kept showing up.  I kept showing up because I didn’t know how not to.  I just wanted to fight.  I honestly don’t even know why I wanted to fight, I just did.

Over the years my body still wears the damage.  The first thing people notice about me is my ears—yeah, there’s a lot of cauliflower there.  I was once in court giving testimony for work and heard a court officer whisper, “who’s this guy with the crooked nose and cauliflower ear?”  My scars are easy to see.  They don’t define me, but they do tell a story.

My scars belong to me.  They belong to me because they tell the story of my journey as a fighter.  I can’t look into a mirror without remembering the price every one of those marks cost me.

And my scars tell the story of my journey in faith.  It has not been an easy one.  My faith has taken a beating.  It is still taking a beating.  But can a faith be a faith if it doesn’t take a beating?

I envy people who seem to have an easy faith.  I’m not good at believing.  It’s a genuine struggle for me.  I don’t trust my God and I don’t always believe He has my best interest at heart.  Faith is hard for me.

My brain is difficult.  I think it hates me.  It never stops and it’s always trying to undermine my belief.  I will experience the power of God in my life, ensconced in life-altering moments, then question whether it was really God at work just a few minutes later.  I will second-guess and doubt and then wondering why I’m not hearing the voice of the Spirit in my heart.  My faith feels small.  I feel like Peter, called to walk on the water and only having enough faith to get myself in more trouble than when I started.

But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me!"  Immediately Jesus reached out His hand, caught hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-31)

My faith is engrammed into me, the result of a childhood and youth in a family that prioritized it.  I think I really tried when I was young, and belief was easy.  But there came a time, maybe some point in my youth, when faith became difficult.  Honestly, I tried to walk away from it—more than once.  Having faith hurt and doubt—a natural outgrowth of faith—was really painful.  So I tried to leave it behind.  I even told God I was done with Him. 

But God wouldn’t let me be don’t with Him.  Despite all my stubbornness, God is far more stubborn.  He refused to let me out of his orbit.  His gravitational pull always drew me back, even when I was fighting with everything I had to not be drawn back.  But God just wouldn’t let me go, and He still won’t.

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."  (Luke 22:32)

I learn faith best the way I learn fighting best—in the hardest way possible.  I am my own worst victim most of the time.  I stray from faith and find consequences waiting—the natural result of my choices.  I find myself injured and scared, once more.  And, yet, my broken faith emerges to be stronger and more personal than it was before.

Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-4)

Because my faith isn’t my faith if I don’t earn it the hard way.  And maybe the fact that a battered faith is a more personal faith makes it better—I’m honestly not sure.  I just know that the faith I have is the faith that belongs to me.  It’s not that big of a faith.  Frankly, it’s kind of small.  But God’s OK with that.  He told me so.

"Because of your little faith," He told them. "For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20)