Faith encompasses many things. Faith in yourself. Faith in other people. Faith that things will work out for the best. However, the first thing that always comes to mind when I hear the word “faith” is God and/or religion. It is something I have struggled with most of my life. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I realized a large part of that struggle was because I was trying to be in control. I wanted a certain outcome or a certain something and set out to do everything in my power to make it reality. But, most of the time, I didn’t get that outcome or that certain something wasn’t what I expected or thought it would be.
It wasn’t until I was faced with losing everything I had tried to build in my life that I realized faith is really about letting go and trusting that the things unfolding right now will ultimately get you to where you should be and ultimately manifest into how things should be in your life. It is having trust in God in the midst of the unknown. How many times in life do we look back on something we were so certain we wanted at the moment, only to be so thankful it didn’t work out later? Or, how many times in life are we so terrified by whatever is unfolding, and look back later almost amused by how scared we were at the time?
For me, everything in the past 5 – 6 years, in particular, has centered around faith. Faith in God. It started when I was about two months pregnant with my daughter (now 4 years old). I was trying to repair my marriage after my then-husband had tried to initiate an affair with my sister. After a few months of things seemingly improving, he began to resume his prior behavior – controlling, cruel, manipulative. Eventually, I reached a breaking point and I finally allowed myself to realize I was absolutely miserable in my marriage. I hadn’t prayed or gone to church in years. Heck, I hadn’t even considered myself Christian at that time! Yet there I was, terrified, broken, betrayed, and alone. I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. So, as I sat there crying in my room one afternoon, I started praying. I told God I didn’t want to disappoint him and if getting a divorce would disappoint him that I would do my best to make it work. I told God how unhappy I was and that I was terrified the rest of my life would be the same. I asked God to forgive me for turning from him and told Him I knew I didn’t deserve His help, but that I needed it. I surrendered myself and my situation to God in that moment and told Him I knew He knew what was best and that I would trust that. Fast forward a couple weeks, I’m at work, it’s the end of a long, rough day. I’m sitting there dreading leaving to go home and wondering what to do, when this voice pops in my head and says “check his phone records.” I am not and never have been the type to check my husband’s phone or track their every move. If I trust you, I trust you (and should be able to). However, I knew I needed to obey, since this had come out of nowhere and it had never occurred to me in almost 8 years with this man to check his phone records.
I checked his phone records. There were numerous incoming and outgoing calls to numerous different phone numbers, from all sorts of different area codes. I googled the first and most frequently contacted phone number and was absolutely stunned by what I found. Rather than get into all the gory details, I searched number after number and each little bit of information about what my then-husband was doing and it led me down a trail of infidelity and deception that went back so many years, I questioned if there was ever a time in our marriage that he had been honest or faithful. Here I thought the incident with my sister was an isolated thing; a symptom of something wrong in our marriage that could be repaired. However, it was just the tip of the iceberg. He had this compulsion he had been feeding right under my nose for years. It was terrifying. It was brutal. It was shocking. I sat there aghast, slowly realizing I had no idea who my husband really was. I literally felt as if I had been sucker punched in the gut. I could barely catch my breath and I didn’t know whether to vomit or cry. I went to my dad and stepmom’s house and told them what I’d discovered and they gave me advice. I waited a few days, trying to collect myself and gain strength and perspective. I confronted him a few days later and asked him to move out. He moved out the following month. In the weeks that followed, I realized the voice was the Holy Spirit; it was God answering my question about what to do. He was letting me see that my marriage had been full of lies, deception, and betrayal.
I was pregnant with my second child and alone when this all happened. Even though I know I didn’t do anything wrong I felt so much shame. I didn’t want anyone at work to know about it. I prayed daily for strength to go about my life as if everything was fine. I drew closer and closer to God each day. He led me to a group that helped me work through all the various feelings and even helped me to let go and forgive my ex-husband. The truly miraculous thing about this whole period in my life, was that even though my whole life was unravelling and I was struggling emotionally, financially, mentally, I had this tremendous sense of peace inside. It was as if I was walking through a hurricane deaf; I was somehow totally calm within in the midst of all this turmoil. I was so calm and at peace, because I knewGod was with me and I knew He would see me through all of it. That is faith. It is deeper than trust. It is a knowing, a confidence in whatever it is you put faith in. It continues to be something I must work at as life continues to throw the unexpected at me, but I have found it to be essential to survive it all, to remain calm when you face the storms that come in life, and to give you the hope, which serves as the fuel to power you to continue despite how hopeless things might look or feel at times. This is why one of the three central themes of my blog is faith; without it, I’m not sure I’d have come out of these past several years quite the same.