Floating or Flailing?

Here is a fact that probably won’t come as a surprise to most of you:  Sometimes I don’t have all of the answers.  There was a point in time when that caused me a lot of anxiety.  But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that it’s ok not to have all of the answers.  In fact, it’s ok if sometimes I have more questions than answers.  There are some things that we just don’t know or understand, and we have to learn to keep on keeping on even in the shadow of that uncertainty.

The challenge is that uncertainty often breeds fear and doubt which can cause us to respond in ways that are less than desirable.  We can become defensive and protective – trying frantically to fix things and searching desperately to find that definitive answer.

What I’m learning right now is that living with uncertainty is the training ground that is necessary for faith and trust to become firmly established in our lives.  Just as our physical bodies only grow stronger if we exercise them, faith and trust will only grow stronger if we exercise them as well.

Peter put it like this:  “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.  These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” – I Peter 1:6-7 (NLT)

I’ve always thought of the trials mentioned here as being terrible persecution or major life crises.  But, I’m coming to understand that the everyday uncertainties of life – the discouragement that comes, the dreams that seem just out of reach, the plans that aren’t quite coming together the way that you had expected, the relationship struggles that just aren’t getting better – these are the trials of life, the uncertainties of our daily existence, that give us the opportunity to exercise our faith and to choose to trust and act on what we believe and not just on what we see.  As much as we would like to escape these trials, we need them in order to grow stronger. 

What I’m learning right now is that it is only as we exercise our faith and start to trust that we can truly begin to learn to rest.  The image that I see is of a rough and churning ocean with no land in sight.  When faced with that situation, our immediate response is to try to escape.  We flail about and wear ourselves out, and if we’re not careful, we’ll drown without ever reaching the shore.  Faith recognizes and believes that it is possible to float and that there are currents that will eventually carry us back to land.  Trust chooses to take action on that faith – to stop flailing and to stretch out on the water and just float.  At that point, you can finally rest – relaxing on the water and watching in hopeful expectation as you wait to see the land appear over the horizon.

I wish that I could say that I am just floating through my days right now, but more often than not, I look around at the raging ocean and start to flail.  However, little by little, I’m learning to trust.  I’m exercising my faith, and those “faith muscles” are growing stronger.  I’m having more days filled with rest and fewer days that leave me wrung out and exhausted after fighting with the trials that just seem to keep coming. 

I’m learning to confidently put my faith in God – to trust him with all of my uncertainty and all of my questions – because “He who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23) – because He has all of the answers even when I don’t.