By Michelle (Graceful, Faith in the Everyday)
"Last year I used to think that maybe I didn't believe in God, but now I know I do." He announces it at the dinner table, and I pause, a spoonful of lentil curry soup poised halfway to my mouth.
"You thought you didn't believe in God last year?" I ask, trying to keep my voice light and bouncy.
"Yeah, but I'm good now. I feel better again," my ten-year-old son Noah says.
"So what made you change your mind?" I ask, soup spoon still steady in mid-air. "How did you come back to believing in God again?" I need to know how he did this. I want to be reassured it won't happen again. I need to know that my son won't spend his childhood mired in fear and unbelief, like I did.
"I don't know. I guess I just sort of waited," he answers. "And then, after a while, I felt like I believed again."
There is much wisdom in that little-boy answer.
He waited. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? In fact, it doesn't sound like much of a plan at all. I expected a more concrete answer. I expected Noah to tell me he prayed about it or read his Bible.
But in actuality, he did nothing. He simply waited.
I don't have the steadiest faith. It ebbs and flows. It wanes weak and then bursts forth, renewed and reinvigorated. And in those waning periods I spend a fair amount of time engulfed in low-level panic. "What if this is it?” I wonder. “What if my faith has been a big farce this whole time? What if I succumb to doubt and unbelief again, forever?"
Ironically, I don't have faith in my faith.
Noah, it seems, has learned an important truth. He seems to understand that sometimes faith does wax and wane. He seems to have learned that sometimes one must patiently wait.
And my child reassures me that in the waiting, God will appear again.
"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." (Psalm 27:14)
Michelle is a Christian wife and mother of two, originally from Massachusetts now living in Nebraska. She is a part-time writer, editor and fundraiser for Nebraska PBS/NPR. Michelle loves to write about how her family illuminates God's presence in her everyday life, and on finding (and keeping) faith in the everyday. Michelle enjoys reading, running and writing. Be sure to go visit her blog, Graceful, Faith in the Everyday.