When Your Faith Looks Weak

Two weeks ago, I had to go to labor and delivery.

I was sitting down eating dinner when all of a sudden I felt pain creep into my lower abdomen. And then I contracted. The pain increased and I contracted again. I grabbed a glass of water, took to our recliner, and put my feet up. The pain got so strong there were tears welling up in my eyes. And then I contracted again. 3 times in less than twenty minutes. I called labor and delivery and, yes, they wanted me to come in.

As I am describing the pain to the nurse, I can feel the panic—that familiar fear. Oh, no, no, no, not again. It can’t be going wrong again. Tears of emotion joined the tears of pain.

I told my husband I needed to go in and we got the kids into the car.

Somewhere in the midst of the hustle to the car, the fear, the texts for prayer, there’s the still voice: 

Amanda, I’m here. It’s okay.

And I just knew He was and it was.

Sometimes, I worry that somewhere in the losses and trials of the past two years, my faith has become fragile. When loss happens to you, it becomes more than just a statistic, a sadness that might happen to one in every four women; it becomes your reality. You are no longer untouchable. When the losses roll in one after another, you feel vulnerable—maybe even doomed to despair.

This pregnancy has been emotionally and physically hard. It’s like I am holding my breath waiting to breathe again. The further along I get, the more it feels like breathing might be safe, but crampy pains and a few contractions and it’s like I am being brought back to that hot June afternoon, pacing the living room, hearing the doctor speak my devastation into the phone, “I am really sorry, Amanda, but there isn’t life in there. There was never even a heartbeat.”

My short stint at Labor and Delivery showed me something though. As much as the initial sight of hard circumstances might have brought on fear, as real as loss might be to me…  faith isn’t built in the absence of hard. The Amanda of 2 years ago didn’t have greater faith because she didn’t automatically imagine the worst at the first sign of difficulty. The Amanda of today doesn’t have a weaker faith because loss has touched her life.

When God said, “I’m here and it’s okay,” during my brief but very real contraction storm, I believed Him.

I knew He was with me, because I still remember some ten months ago when I faced the darkest night, when my faith might have looked the weakest. I was dagger spittin’ mad at God. I hurled the ugliest words I could find in my vocabulary, and I shook my fists to the heavens and demanded and He tell me why. And even there, God was with me. You guys, there were miracles, abundant grace, ways that God whispered to my soul, “Yes, you are walking through the storm, but I am still with you. And I see you. And I hurt with you. And I will not let you go.”

Can I be honest and tell you that I have struggled with thinking that maybe I am somehow less of a Christian because of those moments where my faith looked so weak. And because after walking through 4 miscarriages in 14 months, it just doesn’t take much for me to experience panic at the onset of crampy pains.

Here’s what I am learning and maybe it needs to be said for all of us who have ever struggled with doubt or at some point found ourselves unable to respond with absolute trust in God’s plan when we have faced unexplainable loss:

I think sometimes we act as though faith is a thing that we need to hold close, protect. We refuse to expose faith to the storms for fear it might get beaten down, and we choose to tread water instead.

But faith isn’t for treading water. Faith is for walking on the water.

Faith is for the places that don’t make sense. Faith is for the times when Christian cliché band-aides just can’t patch the brokenness inside you. Faith is for the storm. Faith is for the gaps. Faith is for when you could drown in the depths of places unexplainable.

Faith is this very real, Jesus-walking-with-you, in the mess.

Faith doesn’t need you to protect it. Faith is your protection. There’s a reason why it’s called the “shield of faith.”

I have been turning over this passage: “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” Hebrews 12:2. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. Not me.

Friends, I have learned that real faith doesn’t understand. Real faith doesn’t always see the outcome. Real faith is clinging to God, sometimes even wrestling with God, and refusing to let go of Him. Real faith is being curious enough to walk out into the storm to see if God really means to never let you go.

By the time I got to the hospital, checked in and hooked up to the monitors, I can’t even tell you the peace I felt.

The very minute the monitor started reading the rapid whoosh whoosh whoosh of the baby’s heartbeat, the baby began to kick and punch and roll. The baby kicked strong and close to the monitor. Each kick startled the nurse and me, even hurt our ears: whoosh whoosh KAPOW! The nurse laughed and turned the monitor’s sound way down, “I don’t think we need to hear the heartbeat anymore, clearly your little one is just fine in there.”

Those deafening sounds felt like Grace. They were the final proof of what God had whispered into my heart when the pain was still intense, when the contractions were still coming. Thing was, I believed God’s words long before I had the proof.  

Because I have walked with Him through storms before.

Friends, faith doesn’t get beaten down in the storms… faith is a thing that grows in storms.

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers