The words just seem stuck in me this last week. They won’t form complete thoughts and so, I have decided to write something completely stream of thought and see what happens. I am going to pick a topic, because I have a few that have been pestering me for a bit. So here goes nothing.

Faith

Faith is a journey in the not knowing. The actual definition of faith is following blindly…well maybe its not, but its something like that. I am struggling so much with the idea of faith. I have wanted so much to talk about it here. Because the burning questions for many is do you have faith? Did he have faith? What do you believe in? Why did God take him now? And a slew of other comments about what I believe, what he believed.

Well he believed in God, in Jesus. He was a Christian and as a small child said he was so close to God he considered him like a friend. His spiritual life evolved over the years, but he never strayed from his belief that God was with him. He prayed often. He prayed for someone to love. He met me (so he says). He prayed for a healthy baby, likely three times. The last one is the one I remember the most, because he was willing to trade winning the power ball for that. He frequently met questions of faith with his reasoning of I’d rather believe and be wrong, than not believe and be wrong.

I believed. I prayed often. I felt led by God. I was happy to feel accompanied and blessed. I had come to God later in life. A real believer since I was young, but I didn’t come into real studious faith until about 4 years ago. I changed when I really came to know Jesus.

That night I prayed, I begged for a miracle. I prayed while we waited for help, I told my son to pray. We prayed.

We were good people. We sometimes went to church. I was in a bible study. We prayed and we gave. We loved our neighbors. We got hosed….

I continued to pray for comfort and mercy in the hospital and asked others to pray as well. I told all who asked that I knew God was with us that night, and I had received many miracles…just not the one we had most hoped for.

I went home. I was forsaken. I was angry. I was alone. I turned away. I didn’t take my problems to God. My anger. My frustration. My fear. I took them to people, some of them, or I talked to the spirit of my missing piece. I was shunning Him. All the while He was waiting.

I lost hope. I lost my ability to pray pretty much completely. I hated all the cards and letters that quoted bible versus and told me I was in their prayers and God was with me. I scoffed at the audacity. Really? Was He? Where would they think he was if it was them? And frankly no one can answer that question honestly because it is all hypothetical until it happens. And when its not a reality its easy to say you would react differently than you actually do.

The thing I could never right in my mind….I wanted to quit believing in something that had so disappointed me, but simultaneously I needed to know he was there. I needed to know he went home and was with God in this heavenly place he was promised. I wanted that peace and amazingness for him. And so, I was like a child hiding in the dark hallway after sneaking out of their beds wanting to catch just a bit more of what the parents were watching on the tv. I was lurking outside the living room of God’s grace. Hoping I would not be seen. Not be asked to participate or to go back to where I came. But all the same wanting to know what I was missing. And there are some days I would say I am still here in the hallway. A child hiding, but not completely lost. My faith is something I don’t want to live without. It is something I feel I cannot live without, but it is something I am afraid to trust. I am afraid to hold onto. I am afraid to go back to that which has betrayed me.

So what have I done? I have gone on a relentless intellectual quest for answers. Might I remind you faith is blindly following. The answers are nowhere. There is evidence. Yes. There is conviction. Yes. There are accounts of historical events. Yes. But in the end you can’t see it, touch it, taste it, smell it, or hear it. It is something you know because it is, not because it was or it can be proven beyond any doubt.

And as I searched for answers growing deeper annoyed by finding more questions, a voice inside me screamed out in the shower one morning “believing doesn’t happen in the head, it happens in the heart.”

Breaking the walls of a hard heart can be difficult. It starts with knowing your doubts are allowed. Your frustration and anger are expected. And its your heart that is being asked for and held in His hands. Its not your crazy thoughts, its your tenderness, your brokenness, your lost soul. He doesn’t want to change your mind, He wants to change your heart. And in the end our hearts really don’t think, they beat relentlessly giving us life. All I need to do is release the firm grip my mind has on my heart. And I have decided its ok if I peel back one finger at a time. One prayer, one gratitude, one accepted grace, and one shared blessing at a time.

This journey is far from over. But this is me today.