Faithful Paradox

We had the sweet gift of time away as a family last week over my boys’ spring break. It was time to slow down, enjoy longer blocks of time together, experience some new landscapes, and escape both the rigors and monotony of life at home. Even my college-aged son was able to join us.

I was going to write, “all my boys were able to join us.” The truth is, however, I still struggle to know how to express that statement. Maybe “all my boys who are currently alive” or better yet, “all my boys that I can see.” I know that Ezra is alive, it is simply that I cannot see his life right now. Regardless, even after 2.5 years, it is still something I am not quite sure how to express. I wonder if I will ever get to a point that I know how to say that in a way that feels accurate and sincere?

Nonetheless, the four boys that I am able to still see here on earth were able to join on the trip. The pulling away from every day life allowed extended time to linger at the meal table.

Just prior to dinner one evening, my college-aged son was playing music videos on the TV of our rental from a popular Christian band. One of the lyrics said something to the effect of, “you’re never going to let me down.” It was a song we listened to over and over during the course of Ezra’s illness.

As we sat at dinner, I asked, “How do those lyrics hit you all? What does it do to your heart? Do you feel like God let you down?”

Each of my boys paused and shared various answers. One boy shared that he knows that God never promised to heal Ezra here on earth, but he did feel like God let him down. Another said he recognizes that these lyrics feel good and are easy to sing, but battling to truly believe them is really difficult; that sometimes it feels impossible. As I shared my own heart, I expressed that I felt disappointed with God. I had deeply hoped and believed with faith that God would heal Ezra here on earth and when he didn’t, I felt let down – not just in God’s plan, but in who I thought God was.

I recognize that God did not change throughout the course of Ezra’s illness. He never promised to heal him here on earth. I recognize that God keeps all his promises and that it was I who had wrongly placed desires. Despite knowing these truths, however, our hearts shattered when God’s answer was different than we hoped.

I know there is no silver bullet to parenting. I’m not sure that there is a clear “right” or “wrong” way in approaching faith with our kids. I think there are various ways that we can work through faith with our children, all pointing to the faithfulness of God. For a long time, I wanted to show my kids a picture of an unwavering mom who trusted in God’s plan, no matter what. I wanted to mirror the words of Paul who said, “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 1:11). I wrongly saw this, however, as a self-imposed standard of only sharing what I deemed as “good faith.” My initial expectations for myself left no space for wrestling, for struggling, for doubt, or for many of the realities that often come with walking out this call to faith. If I’m honest, I think I was scared that if I showed my struggle, it would impart doubt to my children.

My desire of living in such a way that my kids see what it is to follow Christ was a good, right and godly desire. I wrongly believed, however, that the faith I had to model, the only valuable example of faith, was that of one who never wavered; never struggled. I wrongly assumed that showing cracks in my belief was a weakness. I misunderstood that showing my kids true faith actually involves allowing them to see both the good faith God sustains along side my broken, human tendency to wrestle and question.

As I consider my heart, I realize my desire was most likely rooted in showing them how great my faith was rather than how great the holding power of God’s faithfulness truly is. Through learning to share my own weakness and struggles with faith, I am learning the beauty of boasting, “all the more gladly about weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Cor. 12:9). Boasting about weakness is not at all about highlighting my own brokenness, but rather, it’s about making much of Christ. He is never broken, never wavering, always sufficient. I am learning that Christ’s power is truly perfected in weakness because only he can take what feels to me weak, broken, and full of questions and turn it into a beautiful picture of his faithfulness to his children.

As we continue as a family to work through loss, I am learning that sharing my own wrongly held beliefs is a tool God has used to help my children work through their own views of God. As I invite my boys into conversations about how their hearts have been affected towards God in losing their oldest brother, I better understand that inviting them to process, even their wrong views of God, has been part of what God has used to begin to heal each of us. It is a tool God has used over and over to allow my kids to grieve, wrestle with him and to also see that God is ready and willing to receive them, even when their hearts are feeling angry and confused. It has been a space where I have had the opportunity to share with my children how I have believed wrongly about God, even confess that, and pray together that God would help us to believe rightly about who he is and what he has promised.

I have grown in gratitude for the opportunity to share my own failings with my boys because it has provided me the opportunity to point to Jesus and his faithfulness despite my wrongly held beliefs. I’m thankful for the grace of seeing how God is using this sorrow to shape all of us. My boys are learning these severe lessons more surely than I did at their age. I am learning what it means to fail and yet boast in the faithfulness of Christ.

I am learning that every weakness I possess in faith, every doubt I hold, every struggle with belief is an opportunity to point to the gospel; to live it out in real time. My failures, my wrong beliefs exposed, point to my own weakness but also to the faithfulness of God. My struggles point to the fact that it is truly by grace we are saved, not through works, not through right belief, not through good theology, not through good faith or being able to muster up enough gumption to hold on. It is truly that God has extended his grace to me and is holding me. “Look at your mom, boys. You know her desire is to be faithful and yet she has failed over and over. She has felt angry with God. She has believed wrongly about him, struggled with faith, doubted his goodness at times. Yet God has remained faithful as she’s worked through all her pain. He’s quick to forgive. Gracious. Slow to anger.”

I get to assure my children, if they are truly Christ’s, he will do the same for them. What they are learning from me in this season is that there is literally nothing they can do to separate themselves from his love (Romans 8:38-39).

Isn’t this, more than anything, a beautiful picture of the gospel? I am grateful in this season of, what feels like, a rebuilding of faith, God is showing me how he is using my own stumbling and wrongly held hopes and expectations to point to his faithfulness. I’m thankful that my boys see a struggling mom who still proclaims the goodness of a God that left her feeling deeply disappointed and let down. I’m thankful for these moments away with the family I can still see and I’m thankful for a Savior who does not expect me to always get it right. He knows I will fail, yet he will not, and in my failings and weakness, we learn more about who he truly is; more about the beauty of God’s unchanging grace.