[ If you missed part 1, you can go back and read it here! ]

It’s not like I had never questioned parts of my faith before – my faith had evolved slowly over the years, and certain events in my life had definitely made an impact on what I believed. But I had never gotten to the point where faith felt so pointless… and it scared me because I wondered, “is this the moment where I’m going to give up on God?”

I grew up being so afraid of any shred of doubt (because doubt meant that you were a “bad” Christian, and also that maybe you were probably going to hell.) I’m embarrassed to say I was well into my adult years before I realized that “faith” and “doubt” were not opposites. I can’t remember where I heard it, but recently someone told me “faith without any doubt is just knowledge.”

I wish doubt had been talked about more when I was younger. I wish doubt hadn’t been so vilified, but that it had been normalized as an essential part of everyone’s spiritual journey. But growing up, it seemed like everyone at church never questioned anything. “The Bible says it, so I believe it.” Honestly, never questioning what you believe is super unhealthy.

So, to continue my story, it was January of 2023 – we had just given up all hopes of getting pregnant, and I was still reeling from feeling like God had deceived me.

And I was super angry. Also probably depressed, but mostly I just felt livid at God… and kind of at everyone and everything in general.

Why had God ignored my prayers, but seemed to answer everyone else’s? Was my faith too weak? Was I not worthy? Was there some reason why God didn’t want me to have another child? I felt like I was owed an explanation.

Many people I talked to offered pieces of advice (some good, some bad). There were people who told me that God would answer my prayer “in His perfect timing.” One person told me if God had “put the desire for another child in my heart,” then He would surely grant it to me eventually.

I wanted so desperately to believe that “everything happens for a reason,” but honestly I just felt like I couldn’t anymore. For my friends who had suffered miscarriages or stillborn babies, had that happened “for a reason?” Did all the pain and injustice in the world really happen “for a reason?”

Sometimes, I think shit just happens.

And I think that God is just as sad about it as we are. I think God sits with us in our suffering and grief, and deeply cares for each one of us.

But at the time, it just felt like God had forgotten about me.

It is really hard to reconcile the idea that God is “powerful enough to do anything” but then chooses not to intervene in the midst of suffering.

This topic has been wrestled with a lot, by people much smarter and more eloquent than I am. At the end of this post, I’ll include some book titles that were very helpful to me while I was processing through all my feelings and reevaluating my faith.

So again, back to January 2023: Initially I wasn’t really sure what to do. I couldn’t pray anymore – sometimes I would just get up early and sit there trying to decide if I could even attempt a prayer, and I usually didn’t. Maybe the sitting there was enough at the time…

Soon after all this occurred, I stumbled upon a resource at work (I work in a library archives that specializes in Stone-Campbell history). I found some interview videos of a preacher, Lynn Anderson, and he just so happened to be talking about faith and doubt. The videos were about an hour long, but I sat there and listened to all of them.

My key takeaways from the videos were:

1. Faith is a gift – some people seem to have it in abundance, and others need to try to find enough faith to get through each day.
   
   
2. Demanding answers from God and needing to know WHY everything happens is a form of idolatry (aka. wanting to be equal to God). Part of faith is trusting God in the unknowns of life.

So I realized I had a choice to make: would I decide to still trust God even though I couldn’t understand why all this had happened to me? Or would I say “enough is enough” and completely discard my faith?

Even though I was so angry at God and honestly felt betrayed, I just didn’t want to give up on my faith. But there were some misconceptions about faith and God that I needed to leave behind, and so I embarked on a quest to find a way to make faith make sense again.

Part III

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Books I Recommend About Faith

Kate Bowler – Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved

Mike McHargue – Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science

Philip Yancey – Disappointment with God

C.S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain

Peter Enns – The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

Rob Bell – Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

Rachel Held Evans – Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again