Is Your Faith Tired?

We didn’t have much of an opportunity to prepare, and we certainly didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into; not many parents do with special needs children. He was only six weeks old when we brought him home with a feeding tube and six different medications to be administered around the clock. Only six weeks old, and each day he fought for his survival while his parents tried to figure out life with a sick child and three more children at home.

To call that season “survival mode” felt like an understatement. After six months of trying to find our groove, my husband and I found ourselves sitting in the waiting room of one of the largest hospitals in the country as our adopted son, now seven months old, underwent open-heart surgery. We knew he would need this surgery the day we brought him home; it was the one piece of information we did know. Yet nothing could have prepared us for the next twenty-four hours.

When we arrived at the hospital that morning, all was quiet and still. Neither of us made a sound as we rode the elevator up to the cardiac floor. I think we wanted to savor every moment we could with our son.

As I changed him out of his cozy pajamas into a stiff hospital gown, my eyes welled with tears. I tried to capture the moment before his little chest would be split open. I decided in my heart that no matter what happened, I would hold onto my belief that God is good.

This truth is what prepared me for the moments after his surgery.

I sat in the ICU, staring at my son with his chest wired shut and tubes running everywhere, wondering if he was going to make it or not. The prognosis was not what we had expected.

My mind swirled with questions: Would he live to pass his first birthday? Where was the miracle we so desperately prayed for? Why would you, the God of the universe, not reach down and stop the hurt? How could I possibly walk through the next few months, or even years?

It all seemed so overwhelming.

When Your Faith Is Tired

My faith was tired. Maybe your faith is tired, too? We all certainly have reason to feel that way right now.

When you’re in the middle of the hard, it seems impossible that the end will come. And oddly enough, you don’t know how hard it really was until you’re on the other side. In some situations, no amount of reading or studying or preparing will get you through. The only thing that will is believing in the very character of who God is.

Faith is trusting in the very nature of God’s goodness, no matter what life throws at you.

Whatever goes bad, he makes good in time; it’s what he does.

It’s not about our commitment to God; it’s about his promise to us. No matter the circumstances we face, his character never changes. He is good.

The psalmist wrote, “Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love” (Psalm 6:4 NIV).

It’s God’s character that delivers us, not who we are and aren’t. Not our choices. Not our failures. Not this broken world we’re living in.

Who Knows What’s to Come?

Who knows if whatever you’re going through will all be resolved in the way you hope? Who knows if the dream you have believed for years will come true? Who knows if, in the midst all the wanting and waiting, your heart will ever stop hurting?

I didn’t think mine would. I wasn’t sure how I would recover from the surgeon’s words, from him saying my son’s surgery was the worst he had ever performed. He went on to explain that my son, who was only seven months old, had the worst scar tissue he had ever seen. He wasn’t sure what the outcome would be or how long he would live. So the surgeon tried something new. He called it a shunt, and he was hoping for the best.

When we’re standing in the middle of the hard and we waiver with the question, Is God really good?, we must ask the Lord to give us eyes to see and ears to hear what he is doing.

As the poet William Blake warned long ago, “Life’s dim window of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and leads you to believe a lie, when you see with, not through the eye.”

Let’s remember that our lives are not a random serious of events. We’re in the middle of a story with God as the main character, and he wants us to see his glory. Sometimes we have to wait to see the beginning from the end and trust that he is working behind the scenes.

Remember: he turned water into wine, and he’ll make the broken beautiful;

It’s what he does.

He gave hope to a prostitute and gave eyes to the blind; if he did it for them, he’d do it for you and me. There is always hope in him.

He doesn’t take away the battle. He doesn’t take away the hard. But he does walk with us through it. He can renew your tired faith and mine. Our God never leaves us alone on the battlefield. He fights for his children. He’s fighting for all of us today.

Lea Turner is a wife and mother of five, three who grew in her belly and two in her heart through adoption. She is on a journey of resting fully in the love of the Father by letting go of striving and walking fully in her identity. She has a passion to inspire others to work from a place of rest rather then strive from a place of anxiety. Lea blogs at LeaTurner.com.