**This is a braided essay with my wife, Kristen Crocker (Recoverettes). Kristen’s parts in the essay are italicized and mine are in standard font.
“Be strong and courageous, Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the lord your God is with you wherever you go.” -- Joshua, 1:9
I want to start by saying this is not a sermon. This is a collaboration with my wife, Kristen Crocker (Recoverettes), and when I say we will be discussing “scripture,” she has questions like, “Scripture always means Bible verse, right?”
I began preaching when I was 15 year old, my mom driving me around East Texas in her gold Toyota Corolla. I know I can preach. When I left my faith in 2017, I lost the connection that I used to have every Sunday, when I stood up and spoke. I went from a fundamentalist Baptist preacher who had attended not just one, but two seminaries, to a hardened fundamentalist atheist, to something in between now -- an undefined faith, one that is less certain but ironically stronger faith.
There are many ways to minister, my therapist tells me.
And this part of my Substack, Salvaging Sunday, is my ministry, my offering.
In the locker room at the Y today, I see a wooden sign that reads : “Be Strong and Courageous.” It also says Joshua something something.
I actually know this verse.
Someone had given me a framed poster with this verse as a gift when my sons were in the NICU.
It takes me a minute to remember who this person was. I think it may have been the auctioneer at our annual fundraiser? I worked at a faith-based non-profit in 2016 and 2017. I had landed the job through some recruiters who encouraged me to give it a try. I was pretty desperate to leave the job I had then (not long after I left, 90% of the staff was replaced), so I took, what you might call, a leap of faith.
After I had given my notice -- it was a state job and had excellent benefits -- I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Oh my god, I thought. This was a 4-person nonprofit that I was moving to, and there was no maternity leave policy. They made the kind and generous maternity leave policy for me.
And when my twins were born 8 weeks early, and when they were in the NICU, and when my son almost died but came back to life and when I held him for the first time and my then-in-laws said “We’ve added you to our prayer chain,” I simply said, “Thank you.”
I felt the hypocrisy in that. I had not spent much time in prayer. We visited my in-laws and I remember seeing a piece of paper with the prayer chains, our names written on it : Kristen and Loren and their sons, in the hospital.
The organization prayed for me. They held my hand in the board room and they prayed. And I just said, thank you, and I prayed, too.
And so I hung that sign in my boys’ nursery. A picture of mountains. Some nice words about strength and courage. How bad could it be.
The first time I met Kristen, at her house, she gave me a tour.
“This is where I keep the kids’ clothes that no longer fit them,” she said, pointing to a stack of clothes on her dresser.
In her youngest son’s room, she had a stairmaster, and behind that, a framed sign with scripture. Joshua : “Be strong and courageous.”
Ah yes, one does have to be strong and courageous when they’re working out, I joked. Because surely, I think, she isn’t meaning this from an actual biblical reference. I know this verse. I used to read it, pray about it, and preach from it for over 15 years of my life.
It was always supposed to be an encouraging verse. One I certainly used many times over the course of my life. Air Force Basic training chapel probably had this verse on repeat every Sunday. They loved using those cliche motivational verses.
Somewhere along the way, the verse got twisted for me. Instead of hearing it as a motivational message, I heard it as a command. A command that if you were unable to match up to, then you were a failure. I am not sure if someone told me that, or if I twisted it all on my own.
Kristen ultimately shared with me the story of how she received that framed bible verse. It was hard for me, at that moment, as I still had some bitterness of organized religion. I remember, along with her telling me that she was in AA, saying to her, “You are the most non-Christian, Christian I know.”
“You know,” she would say, “thy will be done. Just let that shit go. It happens as it’s meant to happen,” she would shrug.
“They don’t mean it the way you mean it,” I would say. Kristen has not felt the particular sting of her entire social circle abandoning her, of the people who supported her, who prayed for her, who held her up -- abandon her, as my circle did when I left my faith in 2017.
When I saw that framed picture on the wall in that room that day, I could never have imagined what we were about to endure over the next two and half years.
Not so long ago I moved the sign into our room. It is sitting on the ground near our daughter’s pack-n-play. In a room where I never could have imagined I would have another child, a daughter, or the marriage that I have.
My husband and I have been strong, and we have been courageous.
In a meeting earlier this week, someone said, “I have been asking, God, how goddamn strong do you think I am?” I have the same question.
We are tired. We are run down. I think of the phrase that says something like, “Depression isn't failure, it's when you've been strong too long.”
The reality is this–belief matters. Not ruminating about our troubles matters. What better way to help you not ruminate than to trust that something higher than you has this all figured out.
My problem I always had with that thought process was that it ignored the data, the statistics, the facts. But, but, but I wanted to say to this thoughtless faith that suggested I trust in something higher. But there’s no proof of a “Lord your God” to be with you! But what God are you even trusting to be there with you? But what if it doesn’t matter? But what if…
Had I known Kristen when she was going through her boys being in the NICU, I would have also thought this verse was a great verse to share. It can be so comforting. This, this thing that you’re all worked up about, that has you in knots, in tears, in shambles, God’s got it. The universe, as Kristen prefers it, has got it.
Maybe later today I will hang that sign in our room. Who was Joshua, anyway, I might want to find out. Maybe I’ll ask my husband. Or maybe I’ll google it or ask ChatGPT, was Joshua a big deal?
But whoever Jesus was, or Joshua was, or God is/was, I will take the good energy from other people. The prayers meant something to me, when my sons were in the NICU. I can feel the support and love and encouragement that people wanted me to have. I didn’t know that auctioneer lady. I couldn’t remember her name even if I wanted to, and I hardly even remember what she looked like. I don’t even know if she was the auctioneer.
My tangential and peripheral brushes with faith have generally been positive ones. “They don’t mean that the way you think they mean that,” my husband will tell me.
But still, I ask the universe : just exactly how strong do you think we are? We have the eight children, and we love each of them fiercely.
After we get back from the Y, Kristen takes the kids to the pool while I attend a writing course.
“Do you have the book Bird By Bird?” I text her. “By Anne Lamott?”
Yes, she writes back. It is quite famous.
I text back : “Yeah, lol. Me—is Anne Lamott a big deal? You --is Joshua a big deal?”
The story of Joshua is actually very beautiful and raw—you might say, relatable. In the book of Joshua, just there in that first chapter, “be strong and courageous” is repeated four times.
Moses, the patriarch of the people of Abraham, has just died. Joshua has just been anointed. The people are grieving, and lost. Joshua is to carry the mantle. They have a mission–the promised land. Now their leader is dead. God reminds them—your promise is from me (universe, God, whatever), not from man.
Just before I met Kristen, Gavin was in the ICU. He was four years old. I lay in the hospital bed beside him. My then-wife had just told me she couldn’t be in the hospital with us. As I recall, she didn’t say much, just that she “couldn’t do it.”
A few days later she would tell me that she was having an affair, and that she was leaving me. Leaving us. And then she did. Which would lead me to meeting Kristen, to blending our families, to having our daughter, to living in the house where I saw that framed sign the first day I met her.
But back then, I was laying in a hospital bed next to Gavin, reading Paw Patrol, and crying. Gavin had been admitted to the Pediatric ICU after complications from the Flu, and a strain of the common cold left him with severe pneumonia.
He was hooked up to a non-invasive BIPAP, and he had wires all over his body. He was really struggling. I was scared that he might die. At that moment, I didn’t believe in a god.
But my mom asked if she could add him to the church prayer list. I said, of course. I would have prayed to any god that would have listened for Gavin to get better.
To be strong. To be courageous. To not be frightened, or dismayed. God is with you, wherever you go.
In my atheist days, I mocked this sentiment. I said a lot of angry things, the gist of which was, if there is a God, and he is with us, then why do bad things keep happening.
But we are doing our part. We are doing the next right thing. And so I don’t bring a hardened heart to this verse, today.
We are meeting whatever is out there, every day, where we are at — so we need not be frightened, and we can walk with strength, and with courage.
Billy Crocker is a dad, fake dad, veteran advocate, writer, and speaker. He writes on his blog, We’re Not Supposed to Talk About This, about faith deconstruction and reconstruction, politics, blended families, divorce, remarriage, step-parenting, and parenting. He has his BS in Interdisciplinary Studies (Govt/Religion), and is currently enrolled in a Masters in Public Policy program.
Kristen Crocker is a mother, stepmother, and advocate for normalizing the discussion of alcoholism among strong, smart women. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho in 2013, and now makes a living selling tree work. Kristen writes about sobriety and parenting in her newsletter: Recoverettes.
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You both did a great job of weaving your voices together here.
The verse from Joshua can feel like a burden when read as command, but in your telling it comes across as companionship; a warming reminder that you're not alone.
Thank you for the read, I look forward to reading more!