When I think I’ve put something to death in life, it surprises me when it reappears, and with surprisingly sharp pain.

I read in Philip Yancey’s book Where is God When it Hurts? about how people who have spinal injuries surprisingly feel “phantom” pain, or pain in limbs they no longer feel or even possess anymore. They shouldn’t feel it; there’s nothing to be giving them pain. But they feel pain anyway.

It’s not there. It’s never even really been part of my life. Yet, the pain persists. Talking about it over and over with friends makes it worse, a surprising revelation in a culture that insists on talking things out.

Let sleeping dogs lie. Let them alone and they’ll go silent eventually, I think. Let sleeping dogs lie?

They do lie.

They are not sleeping.

I work so hard to put things down, put them away, kill them, on my own power, and it seems successful. But, inevitably, something happens — an otherwise innocent moment or conversation with a friend, maybe — and the overwhelming pain surprises me.

It shouldn’t be there. But it still is.

I can’t put it down on my own.

I can’t talk it out and encourage the dogs to constantly bark.

I just have to know that when it happens, I simply turn it over to God, which is anything but simple.

“Here. You take it. Again.”

And inevitably it comes back another day.

So is this it? I wrote in a journal. This bruise is permanent? I never shake this off?

It’s a worrisome thing how some of the things I’m dealing with involve me trying to assemble some sort of faith. I seem to have made a hodgepodge version out of naivety, scant hope, or partial reality. I suppose that’s a poor kind of faith and maybe it needs to be chipped away and and replaced with something better. It’s as if I tried putting on armor with tape and string, and it’s all falling apart.

Whatever the case, it’s just too much right now, and I’m surprised by the pain because I thought my little faith was working and that I was getting better. I thought just a little faith would be enough. I see that I may have built my house on the sand, and all is silent except for those sleeping dogs.