Vachon Imagined

When we speak of loyalty, we are ultimately speaking of attachment to an idea.

Family, at its core, is an idea.

A business is an idea.

A church is an idea.

A marriage begins as an idea of two people choosing to build something together.

Before any of these things become what we recognize as life, there is first a desire, a little kindle inside someone’s heart and mind.

Someone imagines something that does not yet exist.

And then they build it.

A family appears.

A business appears.

A church appears.

A community appears.

What we eventually call life can begin as an idea held by someone who wants to bring that idea into existence.

But there is danger in this.

We can become so loyal to what we have created that we begin to confuse the creation with ourselves.

We can become loyal to the family rather than the people within it.

Loyal to the church rather than God.

Loyal to the country rather than truth.

Loyal to the marriage rather than the love that gave birth to it.

Loyal to an ideology rather than the human beings that ideology was supposed to serve.

Eventually, whatever you become completely loyal to can betray you.

Your family can betray you.

Your spouse can betray you.

Your church can betray you.

Your country can betray you.

Your business can collapse.

Your ideology can fail.

Even the version of yourself that you spent years constructing can become something you no longer recognize.

This is why courage matters.

Courage is what remains when the thing you believed would remain does not.

When the world around you falls apart, when what you served disappoints you, when the thing you idealized reveals itself to be imperfect, you still have this.

Not because you have found another ideal to replace the old one.

Not because you have protected yourself from betrayal.

But because you have not abandoned yourself.

This doesn’t require loyalty.

It is loyalty.

It doesn’t require an ideology.

It is the ground from which every meaningful ideology must emerge.

It doesn’t require you to idealize life.

It is the life beneath the ideal.

And perhaps this is where God enters the question.

To be grounded in God is not necessarily to create another ideal and become loyal to it. It is to rest in something deeper than the things we construct.

Have your ideas.

Build your family.

Love your spouse.

Create your business.

Serve your church.

Commit yourself to something greater than yourself.

But do not confuse the thing you love with the ground from which your capacity to love comes.

Because when we make an idea into an absolute, we eventually risk losing ourselves inside it.

So when you find yourself becoming too caught up in an ideal, ground yourself.

Not merely to protect yourself.

Protection is not the point.

Ground yourself so that you do not lose yourself.

Betrayal will happen.

Let it be an experience rather than a story.

You were betrayed.

That happened.

But you do not have to turn the experience into an identity, a weapon, a performance, or a story you repeatedly tell to prove your worth or gain your popularity.

You can experience betrayal without becoming betrayal.

You can experience loss without becoming loss.

You can love without worshiping what you love.

And you can remain standing when the thing you once stood upon collapses.

That is faith, not in people, not in ideology, but in that which you cannot see without allowing any created thing to become the very ground of your existence.