Series: Building Faith

 2020 will go down in the history books as a year that changed everything. And for me, it really did. 

Some of the changes were superficial, and some have turned my world upside down. I adopted a sour dough starter until I realized it made too many dishes and was too much daily cooking work for me. RIP Michelle Dough-bama. I painted a lot of pictures in online classes and they are hanging up in a lame amateur gallery in my office downstairs. They make me happy. 

The biggest thing that happened to me in 2020 was that my faith got turned upside down. I mean up.side.down. The whole experience was bewildering and frightening and sad for me. And like a friend of mine said the other day, once you start, you can't go back. You can't. 

I saw a quote awhile back that brought me some hope in this difficult process. "What if your doubts are God's whispers to bring you to the truth of the actual gospel?" Doubts feel like failures to me as a Christian, and this framed my doubts in a bit different light. What if my doubts were leading me to strip away the false things, the impure things, the legalistic and not-of-God things from my faith and boil it down to the basics? 

In the middle of my spiritual flailing around, I went to my counselor, and through my tears told him that I was so disappointed in the church and Christian leaders that I didn't know what I had left of a faith anymore. He said, "it's almost like the waves came, and everything you had built your faith on just washed away, like you had a foundation of sand." WOAH, that was exactly how it felt! Maybe it was time to rebuild my faith and only build it on a rock - on things that won't wash away with the waves.

I'm not done this process, and I might never be, but I thought maybe I could write a little series on Building Faith to document my process and share my ups and downs. And I wondered if you'd want to peek in and walk along with me a bit. I can guarantee that you won't agree with everything I say. Some days I don't agree with what I thought yesterday, so that's OK. I am not sure if I might scare you or I might give you hope, but I'll put it out there, and you can take what lands with you and move on from the rest. Please be gentle with me in this!  

One of my closest confidantes asked me yesterday if I have figured out what the rock is. I sense that there are going to be steps to this rebuilding, but I'm feeling better about Step 1. Join me and let's talk about it.