My unbelief

"To trust in a way that I cannot see. That's what faith must be."

I had a health scare recently that brought me to my knees. Not since the days of my student internship, living in the echoing halls of the medical intern building at Rhode Island Hopsital, have I experienced such a concentrated, sustained and nearly debilitating level of anxiety. Waiting for results of a biopsy, I crawled through my days and ate very little. I was surprised at the powerful grip of fearful thoughts. In hindsight, the worst days were probably made worse by a virus we were all fighting.

In the middle of this waiting and fearing, I gave some good thought to my faith, or lack of it. I was even more frightened that my faith in God could not sustain me or comfort me when I needed it most. For a long time I have struggled with the concept of a personal God who cares about little things in our lives. There's so much in life that contradicts this. I know it's pretty small minded of me but my head is very earth-bound and tends to reject all things supernatural.

I feel a lot like Sarah in the Old Testament who sits in her tent and laughs to herself at the astounding predictions of a stranger concerning her future. When I hear people talk about answers to prayer, connections to God or his promises, I listen and maybe even agree, but on some level, I'm shaking my head with disbelief.

I'm not proud of it but I've made excuses for myself for a long time. I hold all things spiritual at arm's length because I feel I cannot sort them out. I can't make sense of so many things and so I give up.

The results of my biopsy today were good but I don't want to slip back into indifference. Life hurtles along and complacency is second nature. Instead, I hope to step away from all of this with a renewed urgency to ask, to seek and to find.