The Comeback

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. (Zech. 1:3)

Have you ever had to make a comeback?

Perhaps you faced a physical or health challenge, and after treatment and rest and rehabilitation you began the creakingly slow climb back to “normal,” whatever that means.

A relationship sputtered, failed, and was resuscitated but it left you feeling exhausted and uncertain. You moved into a protective stance: talking but not sharing too much, trusting but not trusting too much, at least for the time being. Then things started to feel a bit safer and you returned to a way of being with the other person that felt natural, at ease.

Or maybe it was a faith crisis, a collapse of what you used to believe that sent you spiraling. You read books you had never read (and in some cases were told not to) and you started to wonder who God was if God was at all but then you found yourself in a clearing. You were staring across a golden field and knew, suddenly, that faith had returned. It wasn’t the faith you lost, but it is the faith you had found.

For many of us, 2020 began the setback from which we are still attempting to make a comeback.

For me, 2020 brought more than just the pandemic. Talking to my wife Holley yesterday I realized that since July of 2020 I had experienced:

Skin cancer

A mental health crisis in our family

Two eye surgeries (requiring a month of recovery for the first)

A foot surgery (requiring 12 weeks of recovery)

To be sure, life changed and has not returned to normal in any sense. I just passed the 12-week mark of recovering from the foot surgery.

The times when we think about a comeback are when we notice that things in our life out of sorts. These are times when we aren’t feeling “like ourselves” – when we are acting outside of our nature, community, or character to try and get through a season. When people say, “That’s not like you/them.”

Marcus Warner & Jim Wilder in their book Rare Leadershiptalk about a principle that they apply to leadership, but it resonates in all aspects of life. To be healthy – mentally, relationally, spiritually – is to “act like yourself.” In other words, to live mirroring the goodness of your own identity and character as well as that of the community of character to which you belong.

When we are acting like someone else, we lose the thing that is most beautiful and God-hone about us: our identity.

Things trigger our retreat, our deviation from our true identity. Warner and Wilder give signs that we have departed from acting like ourselves:

We shut down relationally

We blow up relationally

We feel like running away

We feel like punching something

We overreact to the situation

2020 brought many of us to a place where we were acting like anyone but ourselves. We claimed to live by “faith, not fear” when it came to masking or vaccines but hoarded toilet paper with reckless abandon.

The isolation led us to unhealthy habits and practices that we still can’t quite get out of: we cancel plans with much less consternation. Leaving the house feels like a much bigger deal. Concert promoters say that if they sell out a show, they still only expect 80% of the house to be full.

Of course, this isn’t limited to the experience of a pandemic. For all of history we have found ways to live outside of our true nature when we’re trying to cope with adverse circumstances. We learn to retreat, to hoard, and ultimately subject our souls to strain that over time causes them to crumble.

This is not who we are or who we were meant to be. But there is always room for a comeback.

In the Zechariah passage above the topic is separation from God, but not really a separation from God. God is never separate from creation – God infuses creation, is enmeshed with it, and as Paul says is “never far from us.” (Acts 17).

So the “return to me” is not a call to a place or a status, but a call back. A comeback if you will. God is welcoming Israel back to their identity within the God-life, with the promise that God will meet them in that life.

When we have lost ourselves, when we are no longer acting like ourselves but are living out of fear and compulsion, the Divine call is quiet but strong:

“Come back to me, to yourself, to the self I forged as a work of art at the creation of all things.”

The comeback takes time. It takes the presence of others who encourage us and practices that keep us connected with who we are deep, deep down. Only then can we feel like ourselves again, act like ourselves again.

Which leads us to ponder this statement:

What if one of the of the greatest moves in the spiritual life is not more knowledge, more serving & sacrifice, more times of silence and solitude but the comeback?

What if the great call is to return to that core identity?

The best place to explore this question is with a spiritual director, but I thought I’d share a practice here that can help you make a daily pilgrimage back to that core identity.

My dear friend and author James Bryan Smith has said the following phrases in various places and at various times through our relationship. Some are modified quotes from Dallas Willard, some are the overflow of his own heart and life.

I’ve collected them in this one spot for you. Consider making this a daily meditation for the sake of your own comeback, regardless of the distance from which you are “coming back.”

You are one in whom Christ dwells and delights

In Christ you can do anything, without Christ you can do nothing

In Christ you are significant, safe, and strong

You live in the unshakeable Kingdom of God, which is never in trouble

If the Kingdom is never in trouble, then neither are you.

The comeback is waiting.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash