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When Faith is difficult

    November 11, 2019 | Our Member's Stories by Wayne Presbyterian Member

    As a little girl, I got all my Bible stories from a Catholic Church in Huntsville, Alabama. It never occurred to me to question the stories...they just were. I had faith. I raised my three children in this very church, making sure they got their supply of Bible stories, Sunday School, Vacation Bible Camp, Confirmation, etc. I was doing my best to foster their faith. I found as I grew older that having faith was easy when your life was blessed like mine was...when nothing bad happens to you or the ones you love. All was well. God must surely be there taking care of us.

    BUT,

    When my father-in-law died, I found myself wondering where exactly he had gone. When my mother-in-law died a dozen years after that, I was really hoping that she was with her husband. 

    When my own father died, all bets were off. Nothing made sense to me. I didn’t feel that God had abandoned me exactly, I just didn’t feel anything at all, except for an all-encompassing sadness that rendered me unable to come to church for a solid year. And I had no expectation that I would ever feel any different. Just like that, I’d lost my faith without even knowing it. And it didn’t even occur to me to ask for it back.

    Through a chance encounter with a church custodian, enter Anne Clark Duncan. And Lynne Sampson. And Rick Davis. And Walking the Mourners Path. And most importantly, God. It will always be a mystery to me as to what God did with me and the other participants in the church library. But I can say with 100% certainty that he was there and he restored me and my faith. I felt like myself again.

    Now, I would think that alone would have been enough for me: to attend church again and feel the happiness there that I had always known. But instead, I found myself pooling the courage to ask God for more – to help my child in the throes of addiction. From my human point of view, the situation was almost too far gone to reverse. But I felt the nudge to pray like I’d never prayed before...and although the road has not been straight (it never is) my 21 year old has been living in long term recovery for over two years.

    Since all of that, God has shown up in three other HUGE ways in my family’s life. Big things that I never thought would happen. Things I prayed for, knowing that God would respond in his time. It still amazes me every day.

    I keep praying and thanking God for what he’s done for us. Because I have faith.