Real Talk: What the Faith?! Pt 2

 

A small group of friends and family gathered in a half-circle, with my father standing before us. Minerva, his wife and my stepmother, lay silently in the hospital cot to his right. His eyes were wet, but full of hope while we waited quietly for him to speak. The constant beeping and whirring of the machines faded gradually to background noise as he began to admonish us. “Your faith in God should be more rooted in Him and who He is, than a desired outcome”. Already powerful on it’s own, this statement was made even more so because of the fact that it came from a man who was about to watch a team of medical professionals remove the life support system from his life partner for the second time in less than 10 years. His faith blew me away.

5 days ago, I had been on my couch when my phone pinged at 11:24 PM.

I looked down at the message: “Have you spoken to dad yet?” “They had to rush her to the hospital. Said she was fine all day but something happened and her heart stopped but they are at the hospital and have her stable.”

My heart sank to the floor.

I messaged my dad almost immediately. His messages were short, almost cryptic at times, not really relaying the true horror of what it was he was going through. As I continued to press him for information, the anxiety began to well up on the inside of me. I needed her to be okay. I needed her to live. When I had spoken to her the day before, her voice sounded clearer and stronger than it had in weeks. She had sounded so much like her spunky, full-of-life self,  that it brought a smile to my face. What the hell had gone wrong in less than 24 hours?

Mulling over the past year, it seemed as though every time I travelled to the States, Minerva and my dad were at another doctor’s appointment. Each time I stopped by to see her, she seemed smaller… frailer. She was beginning to look eerily like my mother did 9 years ago, an observation that gnawed at my consciousness. With every visit, I found myself trapped deeper in a web of cognitive dissonance, clinging to the positive or hopeful results, all while refusing to acknowledge the reality that confronted me: She was deteriorating.

 

I prayed often and earnestly, practically begging that the outcome would be different.  Watching my stepmother battle leukemia was both terrifying and sobering. When my mother passed away, I didn’t have any real reference for how brutal cancer could be; how it could suck the life and vibrance from even the brightest soul. My mother’s death was a harsh crash course into the realities of the disease. This time though, all of that terrible knowledge was etched into my brain, and I couldn’t fathom going through it again. I couldn’t bear to watch my father go through this again. God had to intervene.

 

Drifting back to the present, my father finished talking just as the medical team came into the room to let us know that it was time. They were about to remove the ventilator. My husband ushered me out of the room, concerned about my emotional state and how it could affect our growing baby this early in the pregnancy. I didn’t want to leave, but I quietly shared his concern, and my hand found its way to my stomach for the umpteenth time that day as I entered the hallway. He, and several others went back to the room and the door shut. Tears flowed freely as my friends, my sisters and I  huddled in the hallway, grief-stricken. Even then, I waited for a miracle. But there were no shouts of joy, no shocked doctors came running.

It was silent, and then it was all over.

In the aftermath of that moment, it became clear that claiming to have faith was much different from actually possessing it when it counts. To many of us, having faith means believing that God can do a certain thing. However, the fullness of faith also includes believing in God and trusting that He has our best interest at heart,  even when He sovereignly chooses not to answer our prayers the way that we think He should. Before  my stepmother’s death, I truly thought I understood that, but I soon discovered that the foundation of my faith was cracked and faulty. I did my best to remain positive, and encouraging, but the reality is that my faith had been dealt a stunning blow. Now, when I opened my mouth to speak, it felt like hearing a foreign voice: Words of faith floated from my lips, but I could no longer grasp them, because they had no ties to what was happening in my heart.

Sitting at the graveside, I watched as they lowered the casket, feeling so damn angry that we were here again. Angry that we were reliving this moment. Angry that I was watching my father relive a nightmare. I wish I could say that I found solace in the sad stares of others. I wish I could say that my mother’s death had prepared me for this moment but that would be a lie.  I simply could not believe that we were here. Again.

Back in Barbados, away from the shelter of family, I felt my facade begin to crumble. As the days went on, I became more and more withdrawn. Perpetually annoyed, petty things that typically wouldn’t bother me irritated me to no end. But it wasn’t my husband’s or anyone else’s fault. I wondered if it were all in my mind, or simply the pregnancy hormones, coupled with my grief? Two months passed, and I struggled to maintain a good headspace. I was aware of a deepening sense of unhappiness but unwilling to confront and decipher the root of my emotions. Then one day, tired of carrying the weight of what I was feeling, I allowed the ugly truth to rise from the depths of my heart to the surface of my mind:

I wasn’t sure what I believed any more. Or if I believed at all.

I cannot begin to articulate how difficult it was to even process that thought. My faith has long been a part of me, my anchor in the oft unpredictable tsunami we call life. Tossed about but never quite shaken loose, until now. I found myself barely afloat, sinking deeper and deeper in a roiling quicksand of depression, as the very chords that had held me together at my core for most of life unraveled.

I sat on my couch in the same spot for nearly two weeks. Staring dispassionately at my phone, I would ignore calls and texts. My voiceprint got smaller and smaller, and my prayers got shorter and shorter, until I had nothing left to say at all. Tears stained my face daily, as I tried to shake the clammy hooks of deep sadness from my very soul. Nothing worked, and I found myself pegged to an exhausting wheel of thought: How could I live without my faith in God; the very thing that had gotten me this far in life? Then: How could I still believe, when I feel so let down? 

It took another few days to utter the words out loud. Attempting to pray, I sank into my little hub of depression on the couch. I thought for a minute about what it was I wanted to say. Eloquence eluded me, so in that moment I chose authenticity over pretense.

‘God. I don’t …know if I believe. I want to, but I don’t know what I believe anymore’.

The minute I said it out loud I broke. Never have I so deeply questioned my faith.

What kind of world would I be bringing my daughter into, when it seemed that the very essence of who I was had crumbled to a fine dust? If I felt this low now, what would  postpartum look like? Would I be able to give her what she needed, emotionally? Spiritually? With months to go in my pregnancy, I wondered if  the gossamer thin strands of my faith would survive without snapping completely?  I didn’t know, but I’d have to figure it out. I needed to be well, for her.

One morning, I decided to play a song my friend had sent to our group chat weeks prior. I had never listened to it, and I don’t know what else to call it but divine intervention that I decided to listen to it that day while I scrubbed dishes.  “The Lord’s Song” by Maranda Curtis blasted through my headphones as I tried to drown out the lowness that I felt. She wasn’t more than a few lines in when I realized that God was using her song to speak to me. It was as if He had written a letter directly to me addressing all of the doubts and questions that had flooded my mind over the past few months. Doubled over my countertop, dishcloth in hand, I broke down and wept. I’m talking a straight up ugly cry. I couldn’t stop. When the song finally finished, I played it again and cried some more.

30 minutes later, when I could finally catch my breath, I realized that I felt inexplicably light. The deep sadness that had been weighing me down had lifted at some point. But this was more than a superficial emotional release; it was a deep cleansing and I recognized it as the beginning of the rebuilding of my faith in God.

One of the best things that God can do for you, is to expose you… to you. Stripping away the pretense and pageantry, God exposed my real, raw thoughts. In the beginning of my pregnancy, I had been holding my breath waiting for a good report from the doctors before I could believe. I had to come to the realization that with or without that good news, God would still be good. With the passing of Minerva, my stepmother, He showed me that a faith, confidence or belief built on the fulfillment of hopes, dreams and wishes granted, rather than on the strength of His character cannot last. That kind of faith will always be shaken and rattled to its core because it is circumstantial.

In hindsight, the timing of my pregnancy couldn’t have been more strategic. I believe that God knew I would need some sort of anchor when the day of reckoning came for my faith. While the initial stages of pregnancy made me painfully aware of the illusion of control (and how much of it I lacked), it simultaneously grounded me and gave me a focus beyond the grief that was to come. Granted, my doubts and lingering questions didn’t disappear overnight, but my newfound perspective provided me with a sense of peace that followed me up until the moment of my daughter’s birth, and that continues to spill over into the fourth trimester.  In the end, like He always intended, I was saved by Grace.

 

Over the years, I’ve discovered that the most beautiful moments in my relationship with God have not come when I’ve had perfectly composed prayers, or when I’ve sounded my most spiritual. They came when I was bold enough to admit the ugly truths: The things that you’re not supposed to say out loud to His face. My greatest encounters with His love have come as a result of authenticity.  At the lowest point of my faith, I only found  His Love, Grace, and willingness to patiently walk me back to a place of alignment.

I don’t want you to believe that this story ends neatly wrapped in a bow. Every single day, I choose to believe God. I actively choose to trust Him. And I choose to believe that even when it doesn’t feel good, even if  I don’t understand His actions, that He is still good and that His plans for me are good.

My faith is being rebuilt in real time, but this time the foundation is solid.