After the death of his beloved wife “H.,” C.S. Lewis began to notice a disturbing phenomenon with respect to his memory of her:

…I am thinking about her nearly always. Thinking of the H. facts — real words, looks, laughs, and actions of hers. But it is my own mind that selects and groups them. Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. Founded on fact, no doubt. I shall put in nothing fictitious (or I hope I shan’t). But won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me. ( A Grief Observed)

I have noticed the same phenomenon with respect to my thoughts of God. When I drift away from close daily intimacy with him in his Word, I begin, ever so subtly, to reconstruct him in my own image. This process begins to happen some time before I realize it, of course, when I am still convinced that I know exactly who God is. It’s only when I come back to the Bible that I realize how dangerously close I had come to constructing an idol — a god made to look and sound like the desires and opinions of Andree Seu.

Lewis continues like this: “The most precious gift that marriage [let me substitute “adoption in Christ”] gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant — in a word, real.”

When my son Caleb was five, he found me in the kitchen one Saturday morning, trying to muster the energy to face the day’s work. My head was down as I breathed in the steam from my coffee, and marveled at how quickly the sun had risen. Caleb rubbed my back, and said, “Dad, you’re persevering, because youre keepin’ on keepin’ on. That’s what persevering is.” He gave me a big smile, and scurried off to play with his train set.

It was a mystery to me, when I first read Paul’s letter to the Romans, how to reconcile the exhortation to perseverance (“But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it”), with its origin (“…we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope”). Paul seemed to be saying that we need perseverance to endure tribulation, yet it is tribulation that brings perseverance.

What I came to know, not long after becoming a Christian as an adult, is that Jesus wasn’t kidding—in this world we will have troubles, whether we like it or not. Having suffered and been preserved in our faith, however, we have our character tempered, yielding hope—for what? That we are inching toward the finish line, by the grace and mercy of a God of second—and in my case, third and fourth—chances.

I don’t feel any more wise or faithful than before I first felt the weight of grief on my shoulders. Sometimes that weight presses down, and I forget to hope. My children are extensions of my truncated soul in these times, coming in a whisper, or a giggle, or an admonition to persevere. Keep on keepin’ on.