I’m up early this morning. Now that my little guys aren’t so little, I love to wake up at the crack of dawn to read, think, pray, write, and/or exercise. This morning we need to leave the house a little early for a guitar rehearsal. My son’s end of the year performance is next week!

I’ve allowed myself to have a slow week and it just felt so nice. Well, my mind has slowed down, though my body hasn’t. I’ve been working feverishly in the garden, planting so many flower seeds. This year I’d like to create a pollinator garden with some of my favorite flowers which include sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos. Oh, and our dahlias are coming back up even though I didn’t overwinter my tubers in our basement. So I’m very happy about that.

But I’ve allowed my mind a break, and I haven’t written much at all. Sometimes, I think this is important. I have spent a lot of time reading, however. I read Better Ways to Read the Bible by Zach W. Lambert. Boy, did I really enjoy this book! I also finished A Bridge Between Worlds: My Journey to Be Amish by Elizabeth Joan Farmwald.

Now I’m in the middle of The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns. This is another good one.

I’ve come a long way since my faith crisis happened about four years ago. I went from believing that we could know that we know the absolute “truth,” to all of that crumbling down around me. Then I spent years researching so many other spiritual paths and my faith in God became much deeper and wider.

Now that I’m circling back to the religion I was born into with a new perspective (I couldn’t do this at first because it was much too painful) I’ve realized that I don’t have to have all of the answers. God at the core is a mystery that our human brains will never be able to completely wrap our heads around. For me, what’s important is that I continue to trust in God’s faithfulness and love, and emulate that as much as possible.

Will my faith continue to evolve? Sure it will. As people, we evolve throughout our entire lives, and it makes sense that our faith will likely do the same.

It’s okay to have questions and to feel like our relationship with God is murky and confusing at times. In fact, many of the writers of the Bible encountered the same thing!

As a wife and mother in her forties, I’d like to think that I have it all together. But instead, I’ve come to embrace that sometimes I just don’t know the things that I’d like to. It might be comforting when I feel like I know that I know, but honestly, I think it’s better to accept the limitations my mind has simply because I’m human.

I’ve learned to trust my intuition so much over the past few years, which has been life changing. I’ve formed an amazing bond with nature, too. To top that off, I’ve renewed my relationship with Jesus and am utterly committed to following his way of love.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when in doubt, love. Really, love is the answer to everything. I used to filter everything I did through my interpretation of Scripture (and boy, are there a lot of those out there!) This caused me to be less compassionate than I should be. But if I choose to live according to the way of Jesus portrayed in the gospels, then everything falls much easier into place. I’m also not a huge fan of organizational religion…like, not at all. I think within these structures control and power issues inevitably develop, which to me, is in opposition to the way of Christ.

I’ve heard that the deconstructing/reconstructing process takes on average seven years. So I’m not there yet. As painful as this process has been, it’s absolutely changed my life for the better. I feel both curious and free, and also deeply loved by God.

I hope that if you’ve been walking this same road, you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Have an amazing day, friends!

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