We all remember the mountaintop experiences, where we feel as though we can touch Heaven. But those experiences are few and far between. Most of life is lived beneath the clouds in the valley, and often, in spiritual deserts.
A few years ago, I was hired by a friend of mine to run camera for a small non-for-profit that was sponsoring a cyclist in the annual Race Across America bicycle race. For two weeks, nine days of which were spent on the road, we lived life-on-life with the heads of the organization, “Hope 4 Gabe,” as well as the organization’s namesake, Gabe himself. Diagnosed at an early age with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Gabe was fighting for his life on a daily basis, but he wasn’t fighting alone. His father had started the organization to raise awareness and funds for medical research to cure the disease, and their primary fundraising effort had become ultra-distance bicycle races. The year prior, the cyclists had made their way from the Northern United states down to Alabama, and this year a single cyclist, Brian Toone, was embarking on a cross-country ride from Ocean Side, California to Annapolis, Maryland. He was projected to finish his ride, all 3000+ miles, in 10 days. The idea was that the physical toll that these rides take on cyclists was an observable reflection of the physical toll that Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy takes on its victims. As Gabe’s father put it, Brian Toone started in California completely energized, just as Gabe was before his diagnosis. When he arrived at the first waystation in Prescott, Arizona, 373 miles from the starting line, he was barely able to walk and had to be physically assisted to the hotel room where he would recoup for a few hours. This, Scott said, in the span of a few days, was the same physical degeneration that Gabe had experienced over the past several years. The catch was that Brian Toone was going to recover. Without a cure, Gabe was not.
We spent those nine days crossing the country, mainly on county highways and backroads, overlapping and documenting Brian’s ride as he passed out of California by way of the desert, rode through Monument Valley, Utah, at sunset, crossed the Great Divide in Colorado, traversed the great plains into the Ozarks, across the rust belt, before finding his way into Appalachia and finally, to the shining sea. So many memories. And yet, the truly memorable moments of that two-week stretch probably only amount to a few hours across the entirety of the venture. The majority of those days were spent in transit. Driving or riding interminable hours through deserts, plains, and forests.
By the end of it, so much had changed. Our group had transformed: along that journey there were support crewmembers who dropped in and dropped out. Greetings and goodbyes, the forging and breaking of fellowship. Moreso, our perspective had changed. We had seen the country not from the sky nor the interstate, but intimately: from backroads and byways that the majority of travelers will never see. When we arrived in Maryland, it was hard to even consider that we had traveled so many miles in such a short period of time. The beginnings in California seemed like another lifetime.
But when Brian Toone turned that final corner and pedalled on through the finish line, time seemed to stand still. I looked around and saw that everybody—all of the crew members from every stage of the journey, family and friends who were present at the send off in California but didn’t travel along with the support team, folks that I had forgotten over the last two weeks, everybody—were there, waiting to greet him and cheer him on in the final moments. It was a grand homecoming, as if no time had passed at all. The fact that he crossed the finish line at golden hour added to the effect and echoed something eternal in the same way that a wedding ceremony does. He crossed the stage to receive his medal and I noted just how beaten he and the other cyclists seemed. Like wild-west outlaws who had died bad deaths, they stood shoulder to shoulder, limp faced as the photographer snapped their portraits. But even so, the journey was complete, the struggle was done. All of those miles crossing the country began to dim and fade in the face of completion, but the landmarks stood out all the same. It made me consider some of the finer points of sanctification I had learned the year prior, and how misguided I had been in my pursuit of Christ.
When we read the Bible, it’s easy to be flippant with the accounts within. “This happened, then this happened, so and so begat so and so, and then God showed up and wiped them out.” Rinse and repeat. That sort of reading neglects a crucial point of scripture, however: that it records distinct moments in time that are spread out across years and centuries. Much of the milieu of day to day life, most of the lives of the heroes of faith even, are absent from the written record. Those details are lost in the spaces between paragraphs, the moments when God wasn’t overtly present and making a point. You see, we all remember the mountaintop experiences, the landmarks of our walks with the Lord wherein we feel as though we can touch Heaven. But we often forget and neglect the fact that much of our walks take place beneath the clouds, down in the valley, and often times in spiritual deserts.
When Rebekah and I started dating in April of 2016, I was at the tail end of a mountaintop experience with God. I had ventured forth into the wilderness, I had sought after God, I had sinned greatly, repented drastically, and taken a great leap of faith into the void. My prayer life was flourishing, each day’s reading of the Bible seemed like opening a brand new text. I was beginning to date the woman who I would eventually marry. In my mind there was little that could get in my way. Without recognizing that moment for what it was, I began to descend beneath the clouds of the mountain and back into the valley.
Rebekah took a one-year residency at a therapeutic boarding school in Texas two months into our relationship, and I was, at first, devastated. Yet I still had some afterglow about me following my time on the mountaintop, and I committed to growing as an individual while she did the same 1,000 miles away. No big deal. The summer of 2016 passed with little victories: my business partner and I were finally able to purchase some legitimate equipment, forever circumventing the irksome rental process if we wished to work for a client or ourselves. We produced some original short films that we were quite happy with. We were finally taking steps with our business that seemed a long time coming until finally, we were brought onboard to associate produce and edit a television series, updating old broadcast episodes with new branding and pacing to be sold to Netflix.
It was a dream come true. And then it wasn’t.
Nearly every month while Rebekah was out in Texas, I made the trek from Atlanta, west along I-20, to see her. I got very good at the drive, knowing exactly how to pace my departure and driving speeds in order to avoid the worst of the speed traps and traffic in the cities I passed through. On one of the return drives early on, an overnight venture accompanied by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship, a deep sense of existential dread set in. What if, I thought, I was mistaken about my faith? What if I was merely wise in my own eyes? What if I wasn’t truly saved?
I arrived back in Atlanta at 9am and immediately drove to the church and requested a meeting with my mentor to discuss these things. He suggested that I was possibly asking these questions because I was about to enter a stage of spiritual adolescence. I had come back to faith in Christ three years prior, and it seemed likely that I was about to enter a period of intense growth. He encouraged me to read the New Testament and pray on the transition. I walked out of the meeting feeling slightly better, but still in doubt.
Things began to fall apart soon after.
In the wake of taking on the show, my other clients fell away and I was faced with the prospect of losing my home again. It being so close to the renewal date, I opted to move out early and ride out the lease. Business would pick up eventually, but why expend so much money on an apartment when I could live at home with my folks and save while we rebuilt this television program?
We very soon learned why so many of the show’s above-the-line crew had either quit or been fired over the last few years. The pay was pittance and the showrunner had a God complex. Even so, it was a break, right? We were finally working above-the-line on something that could be seen by a large audience. What’s more, the show was for a church market, surely being able to glorify Christ through our work was the greatest win for any Christian. We dove into the show with more passion and fervor than anything we’d ever done before. This, we reasoned, was God’s call for our lives.
We agreed to an insane production schedule. 200 minutes of content edited from scratch within a three week timespan. Tensions ran high, then ebbed again as we worked through the project in prayer. At some point I stopped sleeping.
One Sunday morning, I lay awake in bed, jittery from caffeine and an all-nighter working on the show. I could feel it in my body that it was probably ideal that I don’t go to church, but I thought better. I was so convinced of God’s anointing on what I was doing that I prayed, felt self-assured, and went anyway.
The sermon was convicting, the worship even moreso. It’s difficult for me to discuss what transpired during that service, only that it was a final flash of the mountaintop, a religious experience very similar to my conversion event, that lit my heart on fire that God’s will for my life was to “keep moving” in my career, to stand in the face of the sea and press onward. I was on top of the world, eager to relate my newfound insight to any who would listen.
I had picked up another client to help smooth over the transition away from my apartment lease. I was due in McDonough, Georgia at 8am the very next day. For the first time in a while, riding the high of this religious experience at church, I was excited to make the drive and see what there was to see. I went to bed that night eager to discover what God had for me. But I couldn’t sleep.
That sleeplessness extended out for a week, each night becoming an exercise in futility as I tossed and turned. Panic set in, and somewhere in there I suffered a nervous breakdown in front of my client. I had good enough rapport that I did not lose the client, but still, it happened, and it was a nightmare realized. On the drive home that day I prayed, and felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety and imminent doom wash over me. I began to tremble and shake—it was the first and only panic attack that I have ever suffered.
I continued to pray, but instead of comfort I felt condemnation. I saw my life through clear eyes for the first time in years. I saw the pain that I caused others, my personal failures, all of my destructive habits, my workaholism that had driven me insane, and what had all of my efforts done for me? Where had they lead? To a lonely, cold, basement apartment. Living with my parents again at the age of 25. There was a deep sense of failure, but even moreso the feeling of conviction that I had been wandering astray. I remember clutching my shirt and desperately wishing to tear it from my body. In the Old Testament there’s repeated episodes of those convicted by God rending their garments in sorrow. I know what they meant by that now.
Existential horror loomed over me. Each day was a moment-to-moment grasp for anything that might take my mind off of the looming question: “what if you’re not really a Christian? What if you are a hellbound heart?” I began to fear the end of the world, and the crumbling of all that I held dear.
I continued to cry out to God. God, it seemed, did not hear me.
One sleepless night found me at my old apartment, pouring over paperwork to find my checkbook. I desperately wanted help and knew of an intensive course at the church entitled “Living Waters” that might be just what the doctor ordered.
I signed up. They took me. Yet, still, I was in the grip of anxiety.
Days bled into one another. I don’t know how much time passed. A month, maybe two.
One night, in the depths of sleepless despair, I prayed again. Nothing. I wandered through the darkened house searching for something. It may have been a Bible, but I don’t remember. What I do remember is opening a cabinet and my little sister’s ceramic piggy bank falling out and shattering to pieces on the kitchen floor. I stooped to pick it up, lamenting one more failure in the destruction of a uniquely crafted, much loved object. “I can fix this,” I thought.
I collected the pieces, sat down at the table, and set to work. Each piece required delicate precision and intense care to fasten back in place. The task, it seemed, was too great. But no matter, I loved my sister, I was going to make things right. Then it clicked.
I was broken. Broken worse than the piggy bank, broken worse than I could ever imagine. I didn’t need to be “OK” and at peace with myself, I didn’t need to achieve and find identity in works. I needed to be fixed. In all of my chasing after God, in all of contemplation on His holiness, in all of my efforts to “be a good Christian,” I was neglecting one supremely important point: The Gospel. I was so concerned with God’s wrath that I neglected to consider His grace. That Christ had died for me, that I might be saved from destruction—both cosmic and self-imposed.
Did this realization heal my anxiety? Not on your life. Did it radically change my perspective? Absolutely.
I was still walking in the desert. My prayer life still seemed tepid and devoid of answers, but I marched forward through the haze, resolute in the fact that I was being heard, no matter if I “felt it” or not.