I’m pulling my first post for A Deeper Story to share with you again today. If you are struggling with your faith, the bright lights of Christmas can serve only to throw your doubt into sharper contrast.
If that’s you? You’re not alone friend.
My childhood is a sunshiny place in my memory. Pulsing with love. So much swinging as high as the clouds, rollerskating, cookie baking, and twirling in that yellow dress with the puffed sleeves that my Mama sewed for me.
But it was also the preacher’s daughter, in church every time the doors are open, I can lead you through the plan of salvation with my eyes closed kind of place.
And in that calm bubble, in the strong arms of my Daddy, I never once doubt the love of the Heavenly Father. Never question the existence of Abba. Never wonder if the B-I-B-L-E is every word true.
You see, I’m a sit-down-you’re-rocking-the-boat kind of person, and I do not like to make waves. And why do I have reason to doubt and question anyway?
But I grow up as children do, and I leave that safe little bubble of home. My courageous groom and I set out to see the world, and oh, how big the world is! We move to California from our hometown in Arkansas, and we learn so much about life together.
About how sometimes it can defeat you with its harshness or just wear you down with its mind-numbing everydayness. On one of those days I turn around and the slow creeping fog of doubt has rolled in.
No matter my efforts to ignore them, the scary questions set up camp and settle in.
Questions about who this Divine Creator really is and if any of the things I was taught in Sunday school are true.
How could the Bible really be inerrant, and why did the early church leaders decide certain writings were Holy Scripture and others were not? Is there really a reason for everything? Does God choose certain people, and not others? Why me? The list runs on and my child-like faith grows weak.
My Bible collects dust and my prayers bounce off the ceiling.
I look down to see that I am still squeezing myself into that pretty yellow, puffed sleeved dress that was made to fit my five year old self.
So I reach down and pull that faith garment overhead, letting it dangle by a finger as I inspect it. Worn at the hem and loose at the seams, is it good for anything but the Good Will pile?
But just like that Joshua Radin croons:
Looks like the rain’s pouring down on me
It’s drowning me now
All I want is to come back home
And this old corduroy coat it’s not keeping me dry
But I can’t think of what else to try
And I’m scared because I don’t know what else to try.
This faith I carry was stitched with as much love as that yellow dress, and just as my Mama made a big quilt to cover their bed of all our baby clothes, maybe I can make something worthwhile yet.
So I gather up the tired faith with my scissors, needle, and thread. And daily I snip out the worn clean through spots, split open the seams, and try to find pieces that are still good.
I lay the salvaged squares out in front of me and try to piece it together with the emerging faith. Maybe one day I will make something beautiful from this mess.
But today it’s still in pieces.
I ache to know: how has your faith evolved over time? And how to you weave the old and new together?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, this. I never questioned as a child, then came up with all the big ones when I realized that I was some day going to die. Is this all real? Why does God let bad things happen? Etc, etc. I am now firm in my faith but it is definitely a journey.
I too grew up a preacher’s kid. I thought I’d slide into Heaven on my dad’s coat-tails. Then I grew up.
Faith is not a location or a stagnate state. It is a constantly evolving process. I find myself shifting and moving everyday. The verse that I keep coming back to time and time again is Micah 6:8
“And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”
In truth if I can focus on this, it is enough.
Bless you for sharing and I will pray for you in your struggles.
YES! YES! YES! I’m a cradle Christian who straddles both my early formation understanding and my adult experience reality. The “worn clean through spots” are my teachers. Like the biblical stories that hold truths but often not facts, I’ve let go of what isn’t of value and held onto the truth … but what other method is there for the truth to be told than through story? I return over and over to the concept of “mystery”. I asked my dad, wise man that he was, a theological question years ago and his answer was “I don’t know”. WHAT? My dad, Sunday school teacher, deacon, pillar of the church couldn’t answer a “God question”? He went on to say that “I don’t need to know. God will figure that out.” So I asked him why he was a Christian – he picked up a bible sitting on the coffee table and said, “Do you know any better way?” This world needs so much help. There is so much that isn’t right about how we live and caretake each other and the earth. I don’t know the ultimate answer. I don’t need to know. It’s a mystery. But in the meantime I’m charged with the life I have and I know no better to live it than by the truths in the stories of the life of Jesus. Do I live them faithfully every day? No. But still, they are my bellwether.
Thank you for a beautiful post.
One of my favorite pieces of Scripture is when John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask Jesus is He was really the Messiah. If the prophesied messenger of the Chosen One doubted, then surely it is natural for us to doubt, too. And Jesus did not scold a lack of faith, he responded with grace. Remind John of what I have done. I think that is the answer to our doubt too. Stories. Tales of what God has done in our lives and the lives of others. Community.
Love this. I relate so well. Thank you for the re-post. I missed it the first time around.
This reminds me of a song by one of my favourite bands called “All That Is Good”. I just want to share the first verse and the chorus:
“Where did the misunderstanding come from
Demanding that we be outstanding and then some
Perfection never was a requirement
Though some might say we desired it
So then for times when things get old I might get cynical
I see that I don’t see
Do they see You when they see me?
(chorus)
In honesty, there’s room for improvement
Thoughts may change, the truth be told
A closed mind will leave you empty
Use your mind to use your soul”
I could just hear it playing in the background while I read this post. It is all too easy to not ask questions, sometimes. My husband refers to that as drinking or eating milk, when there is so much more to faith than just a milk-diet.
I think for me, a light dawned when I was sitting in a religious studies course about the New Testament and one of the first things the professor asked was, “Where do we get the Bible? Did it just fall from the sky one day? Who wrote it? Why are the books that are in it, in it?” It was a fantastic class (and the counterpart about the Old Testament was also great) and it was kind of a “heading off at the pass” if you will, of some potential doubts that I never had to wrestle with for very long.
I’ve still had struggles, and do currently, about what I believe and why – and there are some things which I’m not ready for an answer just yet. When faced with those, I typically ask myself if the answer to the question will have an effect on my salvation. If the answer is “no”, then I let it sit on a shelf and keep an open mind about the topic until I feel ready to tackle it.
But one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s ok to doubt, to ask questions, but don’t try to do it on your own – don’t try to seek all the answers by yourself. Talk to people, talk to people who are secure in their faith, people who are also asking questions, people who did ask the same question and people who asked similar ones. Don’t go through the doubts and the questions alone.
I’m a cradle Christian, too, and never really questioned anything about what I believe until quite recently, when my boys decided they were atheists and certain Christian “friends” totally freaked out when my son observed A Day of Silence. They were so SURE they were right, and there was no room for questions and doubt. That is what started me questioning what I believe. And now, honestly, I don’t know WHAT I believe about certain hot-button topics. Homosexuality, creation, patriotism, war. Who would have thought in my mid-40′s that I would suddenly realize I didn’t have all the answers?
While I would have thought this would cause me to feel unsure or insecure about my faith, I find that I actually feel more secure. I don’t have all the answers, but I know He does. And I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t get why there is suffering and little children are sold as sex slaves and friend’s kids die right before Christmas. But I guess I’ve trusted Him long enough, and seen Him at work in my life and the lives of my friends to keep trusting Him. I know Jesus lived, died for me, and will return someday. And while I know that’s not enough right now for my boys, it’s enough for me. Life is hard, but God. But God.
I don’t know if I will always feel this way, but I hope I am more sensitive now to my boys and to others who question. I drew such a hard line earlier in their lives – I knew what the Bible said about certain things, and that was that. Period. I’ve had to go to them and apologize. I just keep going back to He is God and I am not. And I’m OK with that.
Somehow I missed this one, too. Thank you for putting it out here again. And these responses? They’re wonderfully rich – and they pretty much say the same thing, don’t they? We don’t have all the answers. We can’t have all the answers. We can remember, we can share stories, we can search and use the minds God gave us, we can throw the questions and the doubts and the fears and the struggles toward heaven and pray for a heart open enough to grow into the answers.
I’ve put this quote here before, but I offer it again this Christmas Eve because it is so perfect. It’s from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and is taken from his small book, “Letters to a Young Poet,” written to a young student whom he was advising about how to live into writing well. I had my sister-in-law, who is a master calligrapher, do a large calligraphy of this and it hung in or just outside the door of my pastoral office for the 17 years I served as a pastor:
“You are so young, you have not even begun. I would like to beg you, dear one, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to CHERISH THE QUESTIONS THEMSELVES, like closed rooms and books written in a very strange tongue. You cannot search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. LIVE THE QUESTIONS NOW. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, LIVE RIGHT INTO THE ANSWERS.”
Have a wonderful Christmas.
I’ve come to learn as a pastor’s kid myself, that faith isn’t something I can always create for myself. Instead, in the broken and shattered places in my soul are where I need God to directly place faith, hope, and His experiences of His love. I’ve lived an often “try-hard” life and the more I’ve surrendered the fight and asked for help, throwing all my eggs into the hope basket, the more God has responded with patience, grace, and a faith I know I could not take credit for. I can attest that the journey certainly is not complete and doubt still creeps into the most weary places, but the journey still seems to be worth it. I’m just hoping that if I hold on tight enough to the right things and let go enough in the ways I try to control, I am a little better off tomorrow than I am today.
Prayers for you and for me…..
So much in this post….I am a cradle Christian. I was supposed to be a Pastor’s daughter, but my dad left when I was 2 and a half. All that has really been reconciled by God’s grace, but what still remains is the lifelong journey of putting the pieces together without all the pieces. It is so normal nowadays that to question its affect on my life is like, “well, we all deal with that.” It’s not normal. Praying for the perseverance to participate in this journey with joy for all who feel or know what it is to be abandoned.
Wow. That’s all I can say… and Thank You. This is me! This is also my story.
We hunger and thirst for the same God, and that God is moving for us. He is a big God.