Faith eludes me. A lot. I find myself at times praying about something that I believe God can do but also knowing that He may choose not to work it out the way I’m asking Him to, if He works it out at all. This can/will discrepancy is so hard for my heart and mind to reconcile.
How do I have faith that something is going to happen when the realist side of me knows that it may not? What does it mean to have faith if my heart believes it can happen while my mind doesn’t know that it will?
I think my faith waivers most when a life is lost. I have grieved a lost life several times in my life and I’ve never been able to wade these waters with a positive outlook. I have a few friends that are right now going through a time of loss. A child only 20 months old with no previous medical issues had a seizure which led to extreme medical complications, ultimately ending with his passing, all within a matter of days. A child lost is the most unimaginable grief there is. One I hope I never know. But their view of the situation is one that I’ve yet to be able to grasp in any time of grief. In their own words, they are “resting in the promise that this is not the end”. The ability to rest in this promise in what seems to me a hopeless circumstance takes an enormous amount of faith. I love that they are able to find some place of peace through this. No doubt, their humanity rises out of this place of peace delivering sadness and despair but they are resting. Resting. Allowing God to work. I love this faith. I want this faith.
I can’t pinpoint a time in my life when I realized my faith wasn’t as strong and sure as it used to be. Was I ever full of faith? Has there ever been a time when my heart and mind agreed? I don’t think I’ve always been this gloomy about faith but I don’t know what triggered it and I certainly can’t figure out how to grow my faith now.
Whenever I speak so openly with “church people” about my faith, and my struggle to find more of it, I’m met with a little resistance. Understandably so, I guess. Maybe they think I’m giving up. Maybe they are concerned that I’ve let the burdens of life get the best of me. And maybe they are right. But maybe they aren’t. I want to believe that they are wrong. That I’m working on it. And, more importantly, that I’m allowing God to work on it. I’ve found myself many times speaking the words from Mark 9:24 where a father brought his son to Jesus to be healed but didn’t come with full assurance that it would happen. He said, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And those words sum up this struggle of mine. I believe; but, I have unbelief. The yin and the yang of faith.
Several months ago I started a small group for women that are looking for a place to feel love. That sounds pretty nauseating, I know. But in its most basic form, that is the role that this group serves for us. It’s a community of Monkees that give love and grace to others as freely as we receive it. We look for needs around us, seek out opportunities to help, and we do whatever we can to meet the need, to be the help.
Whatever small amount of faith I had left in me when we formed this group felt pretty insignificant. But these women, these sisters, have saved me as much as any group of people can. One thing that my heart and mind do agree on is that God placed these women in my life to help me see what faith looks like again.
Each month we take on a Love Project and April’s project centered around a woman that had recently left an abusive relationship and found herself now living in a small apartment with not much more than a bed and some books to her name. I came to our April meeting in a place of pretty low faith. I really just longed for some adult conversation. I looked forward to a night of girl talk and good food. And I was glad it wasn’t my month to lead the Love Project. But when Lindsey presented this need to the group and we began to discuss how we could help, something started to shift inside of me. The woman’s name was Faith and she needed some love and grace.
Her name was FAITH! I start asking God how I can find my faith again and he sent it to me in the form of a woman that needed me to have a little faith for her. There were, I’m sure, moments when Faith had no idea how she would be able to get furnishings for her living room, a microwave for her kitchen, or towels for her bathroom. But God knew. He saw a woman needing things to assist in getting her life back on track and he saw a group of women with the means to help.
Over that next week, I began looking in my home for things that I could give to Faith and when I pulled something out for the box I found myself saying for Faith in my head. After a little while I felt like I wasn’t saying it for our girl, Faith, anymore but for my own faith instead. Faith that there are so many people willing to help a stranger. Faith that God is using this little group of ours for His work. Faith in love. Faith in us.
I am so appreciative for the people that are in my life showing me what faith looks like again. I’m trying to find that place of rest in God’s promises. A rest that is sometimes not so easy to settle into. And maybe my heart and mind don’t always have to agree. Maybe that’s the real beauty of faith. That when my mind says no way, the love in my heart says, He’ll make a way. The challenge here is accepting His way over mine. His will over mine.
My mind doesn’t know where and when the faith will come, but my heart has to believe that it will.
It will. It will. It will.