When Faith Looks Like Wet Feet

"Faith isn't faith 

until it's all you are holding on to."

My mom used to describe it as "holding onto Jesus for all you are worth."

I have never really thought of myself as a "great woman of faith."

I am analytical, skeptical, thoughtful, curious.
I am a plan-your-chess-moves-20-steps-ahead-girl. {If I even played chess that is...}
I seek understanding, purpose, meaning behind every life event, people interaction, and random nuance.

"Lindsey, you cannot know the end before the beginning..." 

Another pearl of wisdom from my mother....she knew at a young age, when I would analyze her attempts at comforting, that parenting a child like me would require creativity, skill, and A LOT of wisdom from Jesus.

I just wanted to know. . . . . EVERYTHING!
I still do.

From grade school to college, that voracious appetite for knowledge served me well with teachers and classmates alike. Dubbed "The Sponge" by my college professors at graduation, I plunged into real world living with the same thirst for insight.

But how do you live out blind faith and trust in God with such a desire to dissect and master every morsel, every scrap, every particle of data?

In the wake of a now-looming decision last week, I found myself overwhelmed, frustrated, and disillusioned with my own feelings, fears, understandings, and timelines of our current journey -- foster care.

The longing to pursue this ministry gave birth in my heart more than two years ago. Yet my own current hesitance as well as pressure to receive cases.....children before certification is finalized, house details are arranged, back up care is permitted and a thousand other details leave me feeling lost in an avalanche of unexpected emotions, clawing their way through my already-fragile soul.

Brokenhearted at the path's unfolding,
Longing to find peace in the chaos,
Desperate to understand as well as be understood,
I sought refuge at my church's monthly week-long prayer meetings.
On the very first night.

Pouring out my soul to the Father,
I confessed my guilt and condemnation over not having the faith I have seen in the Word.
Faith like Paul to stand before kings.
Faith like Peter to walk on water.
Faith like David to face the giant.

And then....
Just like a whisper, breathing life into my bones like a sunset ocean breeze...

He said,
"Faith isn't always in the big moments. In the grand gestures. Faith does not always have to look like jumping in the deep end. Sometimes faith is just being obedient like Moses to stand before a nation of people, step into the water from the shoreline, and believe that somehow, some way, there will be a pathway through that Red Sea."

To step in, even ankle deep, in front of other people knowing you might fail, or look stupid, or be drowned by the enormity of the obstacles in your path, well, let me say...it takes the breathe right out of my heart.

Yet, somehow.....
Where I am weak.
He is strong.

Because as I step in faith,
He holds the water back,
keeping me dry.

The threats might still surround me.
I mean, imagine how Moses and the Israelite people must have felt with gigantic swells of moisture roaring as wall-like monsters to the left and to the right of them. They had to trust that God would fulfill His promise to take them to the other side.

The first step might not have seemed like that big of a deal. After all he was just sticking his toes into the water. But just like "the first cut is the deepest," the inaugural step of faith into every new endeavor takes faith that only God in His infinite wisdom can impart into your bones.

So where do I go?
Back to Him.
Back to my knees.
Safe in the shelter of His wings.
Even as my feet start to get a little wet.