Real Faith

It was almost one year ago that everything began to change. A two week shut down led to months of quarantine, distance learning and home church. Masks, social distance, conflict at every turn. Life suddenly felt chaotic. Yet I found myself mostly at peace. We rolled with the COVID punches, growing in flexibility and patience, fostering hope and deepening our rest in Christ. This was true for all but one area of life.⁣

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In the midst of this chaos, we had a daughter on the other side of the world in a third world, government run orphanage. She may have been safe, but she was not okay where she was. A small group of dear friends met on zoom to pray. I sobbed as I said we are no longer praying for her to be home by August 1st as we hoped. She may not come home this year. My heart shattered with the thought of how this virus was impacting our daughter. ⁣

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I expected I should have more faith. Faith that was unshaken, grounded and maybe even stoic. I thought my faith should be full of gratitude, joy and perseverance. I wanted my faith to beautifully point to Jesus. ⁣

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The greatest miracle in this pandemic is not our flexibility or ability to roll with the punches. Our daughter came home just before the end of 2020 and believe it or not, that’s not even the biggest miracle of this pandemic. ⁣

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The greatest miracle of this pandemic is my faith that has grown. It has not grown in the ways I expected. In fact, faith even looks different than I expected. I realize now what faith looks like (maybe that’s the real miracle). ⁣

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Sometimes there is faith in the tears, the laments, the voiceless prayers. Some days faith is in the waking up and facing the day, the redundant prayers that seemed to go unanswered. Faith is asking people around you to lift you up. Faith is seen in confessing your sin, sharing your doubt and honestly opening your heart. Faith is imperfectly fixing your eyes on Jesus. Faith is not the absence of doubt. Hope is not the absence of grief. Joy is not the absence of sorrow. Peace is not the absence of suffering. He meets us here. In these broken places. He is our peace, He is our joy, He is our hope, He is the perfecter of our faith. #rhythmwriting2021