A Blurry Faith

 I remember that crisp morning in the mountains. The smell of pine trees and dirt filling my lungs as I made the small trek towards the rock amphlitheater. Jeans and a sweatshirt proudly displaying the name of the Christian College I hoped to one day attend. Hair up in a messy pony tail. Sleepy eyes and freshly brushed teeth.

My 2nd year at Church Camp and I already knew it well. 8 year-olds have a good memory. I walked arm in arm with friends who I'd known since our time together in the church nursery.

There was anticipation in my heart, in all of our hearts.

And it happened as it seems to always happen. The preacher spoke with fervor and enthusiasm. He spoke of need, of responsibility and purpose. All things with certainty.

He asked us to enter in. Into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. To ask him into our hearts and begin our true journey as Christians.

It was all so simple, so clear. To get from here to there I needed to do this and all would be complete. My life would be changed and I would have taken that ever so sacred step in my faith.

I did it. I prayed that prayer with the most genuine child like feelings and joined my group of girlfriends all with tears in our eyes and Jesus in our hearts.

I was a Christian.

Elementary school, Middle school and High school passed by. I clung to that day, that prayer, that simplicity.  It was a consistency in my life. The beauty of a clear faith to a 16 year-old.

My youth pastors spoke of an uncomfortable faith, one that required us to step out of our comfort zone and declare Jesus to the crowds, to our unchurched friends. To be different by saving ourselves for marriage and keeping the cuss words in. To saying no to that beer and yes to our daily devotions.

My friends and I did not questions these things. 

I went to that Christian College I had proudly displayed on my now too small sweatshirt and I began to study the Bible; these words and verses I had always heard. We were asked to go deeper into their meaning, to begin asking questions. It was a step towards a more broad exploration of faith, but it remained clothed in safety. 

It was OK to ask questions as long as you still believed; in the creation, a certain way of living and of faith like a child. I raised my hands during worship and sang songs with eyes closed. I needed to have that feeling in my heart. It was my comfort, and yet I remembered being told to live a faith that was uncomfortable. I'll make sure to smile at a stranger tomorrow and wish the lady who cut me in the grocery store line a good afternoon.

Then I graduated and entered into a more independent life, one without a small campus to call home and a group of girls to greet me at the door. I got married and moved away form the church I had known my whole life. No longer did I hear those verses, those questions; and things got quiet.

My questions changed. I began to wonder if my prayers were just conversations with myself. I stopped getting "that feeling" in my heart. My comfort was shrinking and I was uncertain, unconvinced. I didn't like it.

I wanted certainty, simplicity, a warmness to fill my heart, to put my mind at ease. It was always so much easier that way.

But the certainty wouldn't come. Faith was blurry. It was unclear and full of questions. It was uncomfortable. I didn't like how it felt, so sometimes I would pretend. I would put on the faith of my college years. I would talk about God's plan and tell friends I was praying for them.

But I wasn't. The words felt empty, fake.

Now as a wife and mother of two young children I still feel uncertain. No longer is the Jesus I prayed to 5, 10, 15 years ago the same one I think of now. But I still think of Him. I still pray to Him; not because I think this will answer my questions or fill me with that warmness, but because it allows a time of meditation, a slowness in the midst of daily life. 

My faith is uncomfortable. It doesn't provide the answers I so want it to. It is not that simple, and yet it better fits this human condition of mine. One of brokenness and honesty.

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

I read these words as a junior in college. Back then they were all well and good in their philosophical goodness, but they were not deep.

Now, as I reread them, I am presented with a truth. A truth in the midst of the questions. All one craves in this world is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. 

I still crave these things and now my God, my "Christian" life is one in pursuit of love. Of this I can rest my faith. It is not as clear, not as full of answers. It is broad and vague, but it is truth.

It does not provide the easy warmness in my heart that I once knew, but it provides a call, a purpose and a way of living.

Blessed are those who live uncomfortably in their faith, who struggle and question and often don't believe, for in those places we find a faith that is much more real than a "Jesus in our heart."