Maybe because I am young. Maybe because I know badness. Maybe because I don't trust well. Whatever it is I can see I don't have what the rest of you have. I don't have faith. You cant look into the mirror and notice, oops I forgot to put on my faith today. Nobody will point it out to me, hey why don't you have faith? Its just my heart that tells me I don't believe. There are times I want to. There are times I feel like I could. Did I drop it? Did it flake off me or slip though a broken pocket? Why didn't I turn around and pick it up when I first noticed it was gone? Can I ever find it again or is it lost forever in a vortex where every lost soul's faith goes. No I am not like you. You cant see that. But I can feel it.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
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4 comments:
It was the year I turned 34. There was a young girl, about your age, that I had known since she was 5 or 6. She was a really good person but she had lived a really hard life and many terrible things had happened to her and none of her doing. She was dying of cancer. I felt I was surrounded by pain and suffering.
I was an atheist then so I did not believe in the supernatural and I did not believe in evil. Bad things were merely evolutionary issues working themselves out by chance and happenstance. But that was not very satisfying. I had no faith and no use for faith and less use for people who claimed it.
But that's when I began my struggle to understand. Eventually I read the book of Job in the Bible. I read it many times. And I didn't really get it.
One night though I read the 5th verse of the 42nd chapter. Job says to God "Before I had only heard of you. But now I've seen you." Suddenly, as though I had been sitting in a very dark room and someone flipped on the lights, I understood. I had been just like Job except that he was righteous and I certainly wasn't. I had heard of God but I didn't now Him.
Since that time I've never, ever doubted Him. I am more in awe of Him no that I was then.
The amazing thing to me is that He should love me. I know He loves you, too.
He's present. He is approachable. He does not judge anyone who seeks Him. In my case I found Him when I stopped struggling. Everyone's story is unique.
My friend had believed in Him long before I did. She had only one leg but she wanted to be baptized before she died. She asked me if I would hold her up in the baptistry. I did that for her. Not long after she died.
You feel alone but every believer at some point has walked the same path.
I hurt for you and I pray for you and I hope for you.
I really don't know what to say except I about to cry.
I have always been a believer but actually having Faith was a different thing. When I was very young, it was easy because life was easy.
At your age, my faith was gone. My world was falling down around me and I found it hard to believe in anything.
As I got a little older I found that again faith was easy when everything was going my way. When things got rough faith went out the window.
It was when my mother had her stroke that things changed. Her first words when she awoke in the hospital were "Aren't you glad we know the Lord?". This was the faith that I wanted. Two days later she slipped into a coma and died 2 weeks after that. I sat by her bed for those 2 weeks reading the bible to her and singing hymns. It was in that time that I felt the peace encompass that room and knew that God's will was being done there. While my mother was dying I was again finding a life of faith.
I don't have much to add to Flinty's or Lori's comments but I find their words comforting. I just want you to know how much we all care, Stef.
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