On faith

I feel like I've been learning a lot about faith over the last two months.

It's been such an odd experience, that in the midst of my great grief, I have not been able to feel a lot. I feel a few things I can identify that would seem typical during the grieving process- broken, sad, overwhelmed, angry, confused, tired. But overwhelmingly, I feel like there are so many jumbled up, confusing things to feel that it's like something short circuits inside me. And so I end up feeling this weird mixture of blank, stale, and unsettled as I live most of the time in a very superficial reality going through the motions of each day, while something in the background is screaming at me that things aren't right, there are things that need to be felt and processed, and sorted through and the end result is that it just feels awful. I really don't know how to describe it. The last four or five years have been so full of large trials - some that people know about and some that most people don't know about- and something inside of me has reached it's limit and now I'm grieving for all of it. "Complicated grieving" my therapist said it's called. She assures me it's ok and good to grieve it all now that it's come, that it'll just take time. But it's very unpleasant. Today I read/heard two or three different stories of hard things people are going through and as I was taking in these awfully hard things people are experiencing, I just felt dead. I wanted to feel empathy and heartache and love for them. But instead I felt nothing. It is all too much. It's a very frustrating way to feel. I want to feel like myself. And I want all of this to be over.

So, along with all of this business of feeling dead inside also comes a whole lot of not being able to feel the Spirit. For one thing, not allowing myself to get too deep into "spiritual things" (like meditating and pondering during prayer, for example) because that experience brings with it a whole lot of feeling and that brings a whole lot of pain, so I shut down at the start of it as a defense mechanism, I think. But also, just not feeling those "sparks" of the Spirit throughout the day - the ones that motivate me to do better, that fill me with love for people, that give me a flash of inspiration or insight - that just make me feel alive and like myself. I don't blame anyone for that or doubt the Lord or anything like that. It just is how it is. And I have faith that it won't always be like this because I have had fleeting moments of recognizing a tender blessing  from the Lord or feeling someone's love through a kind conversation or gesture that warm me. 

The bottom line is that I have been brought low. I have had experiences in life over the last few years that have made me feel like I was low- a particular trial during which I can remember laying crumpled on the floor in the shower sobbing, pouring my heartache out to the Lord, and feeling like there wasn't one soul on Earth who I could share my heartache with. Or pick virtually anytime during Elena's cancer treatment and I would have told you I felt very humbled indeed. But this! This is a new low. I have never felt like this - so stripped of all my resources to cope, so broken. I truly feel like I've been brought down to my very core. But I've been intrigued by something I've found there. Along with the darkness, I've also found the core of my faith. And in the process, I think I've learned something about what faith really is. 

Faith is the quiet, steady burning thing you find after you've stripped all the other layers away. The red-hot, but silent core under the layers of dirt and green grass and frilly flowers. My faith usually manifests itself above ground with the billowy grass and the blooms. Which is a good type of faith, too. I feel pretty happy and constant, but mostly I just feel. But when life has torn away all the excess layers, and I stand bewildered and feel like there's not much to me, I am still. 

And I realize that never have I faltered, never have I not believed. 

I know God lives. I know He loves me and that He is still guiding and blessing me ever so patiently and mercifully. (Which is amazing when even I am sick of myself!) I know He has a plan for me and my family and that good things are in store. I know He always hears my prayers. I know those things even when I can't feel them right now. And that is everything to me.

Faith, in it's simplest form, is the bedrock that everything else is built on. When all the other parts of "me" are stripped away, it is the thing that remains constant and unchanging - that is built into my very existence.

Eric and I sat philosophizing a few nights ago about out experiences with hard trials over the years and this feeling of faith I'd been thinking about. He said that he felt a lot like this when Elena was first diagnosed. When he felt so low and then eventually started feeling hope and coming to the surface again, he realized that a lifetime of good choices had built up his spiritual reserves that got him through that time. A day of going to church here, another day of scripture study there, a bit of service at home, a seemingly small act of honesty, consistent prayer, and so on. Those things were like savings for a rainy day. When the rains did come and beat upon him until he could hardly stand, what was left was the faith to keep holding on- born of thousands of small choices to do what was right. I suppose that's part of what the scriptures are mean when they talk about being built on a rock. (Like this one and this one, for example.) And it hit me - the small choices we make each day MATTER. Those are the things that build faith that will last.

I am grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ - a gospel of change. I'm grateful for the Lord's mercy to me. I am struggling mightily these days. But I know God lives and I know that things will eventually get better. There are a lot of things I don't understand. Right now in my broken, mourning state, I can't see or feel clearly enough to understand why certain things have happened, the timing of things that have happened, etc. There is a scripture that really speaks to me these days. It speaks to my lack of clarity, but simple, sure faith and sums it all up. I feel to say, like Job of old:

"...the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
(Job 1:21)