All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir

by Beth Moore

I saw this life of mine going differently than it has. I saw myself turning out better than I have. Surer about how things go. I expected to have more riddles solved. More people sorted out. More grays dissolved to black-and-white. I never was able to divide up the room into the good and the bad the way I’d wanted. I couldn’t even unmix my own feelings, let alone those of others. I needed neatness from God. What I got was a tangled-up knot. Funny thing is, not once had it occurred to me how little difference exists between a tight knot and a firm tie. Somewhere inside the balled-up, walled-up mass of tangled strands in the life of faith, the inscrutable God of heaven and earth has the loose ends tied. The ones that mean anything, anyway. Tied securely. Tied sturdily. Tied in such a way that all the human tugging, doubting, and fretting in the world can’t loose them. Tied in such a way no mortal mind could calculate. What God is this who can keep a secret so long? What God is this, so unhurried to prove himself? So confident of his own spotless character that he is unpressured by all the second-guessing of his own children? I’m growing old now, quickly, the clock ticking, the days flying. I’m not very sure of myself anymore, if I ever truly was. But I am utterly sure of one thing about my turn on this whirling earth. A thing I’ve never seen. A thing I cannot prove. A thing I cannot always sense. Every inch of this harrowing journey, in all the bruising and bleeding and sobb...