Faith Lost

I have followed with interest the news stories of Laura Bush releasing her biography, Spoken From The Heart. The single story that the reporters are focusing on is her admission that she "lost" her faith after a 1963 car crash in which a classmate was killed. She accepts responsibility for the crash, apparently visiting with a friend in the car and ran a stop sign. Tragedy, guilt, remorse, pain, and ultimately a "loss of faith" are her scars from that event. I haven't read the book, but intend to. But several thoughts have swirled around in my head since hearing and reading these announcements of the release of the book.

The first reaction was simply, "Yep, I've been there." I think anyone who approaches this journey with even a single grain of honesty understands that faith abandonment is going to happen. We live in a realm where we can't ever see what we claim to believe in. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to keep up a good front. Life simply conspires to drive us down, and we are asked draw our strength from what some would call an absentee owner. I have written before about the "Thundering Silence" that frequently accompanies deep crisis in the life of the believer, it is more common than most of us are willing to admit. At some level I lose faith a little bit everyday, then come across a moment that restores all the faith, renews the hope, and gives me the will to move on. I really appreciate the honesty that it takes for someone to freely admit that they have lost faith. I think it is the first step back to regaining what was lost.

Secondly, I'm not sure we understand the phrase "lost faith" quite the same. There are times when my spirit drops low enough for me to question the existence, or at least the effectiveness, of God in our world. Descartes might make the point that if we question the existence of God we are already admitting that we believe He exists (I love philosophers, they make me feel good about the most perplexing questions) So I come back to the idea that in my wrestling with the concept of God, I am affirming my willingness to believe. Get it? I'm having a hard time explaining, but maybe if we can agree that there are people out there who don't care about all this, then at least my concern reveals a heart turned toward God. Whew.

Finally, faith is a creature that stays hidden sometimes and reveals itself only long after a crisis. Sometimes it even surprises us when we realize that we are calm in the midst of a storm, and shouldn't be. I found out 20+ years ago that the worst time to evaluate your faith is in the midst of a terrible event. The best thing to do at that moment is to believe that the God we serve is merciful and can forgive our anger/depression/heart-brokenness. It is like when our kids are little and have a terrible time with something and we try to hug them close and they fight and cry and lash out at us, but we gather in their struggling arms and legs and push their crying eyes close to our breast and calm them. We hold them close amidst the crying and struggling, rocking back and forth, shushing them with our love, and never question that we love them and they love us...even though they might at that moment claim they have no faith in our love for them. We forgive that child-ness in them because we know they will, in time, understand.

Godspeed, there are times when we have to believe that the path we are on, the journey we have undertaken will lead us home.
Don