It was a month earlier than I had imagined it being.
I remember turning over in bed and feeling the seeds of apathy being planted in my heart. It was my means of protection.
For if one were indifferent, one could not feel pain.
But the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
And my indifference created a shell that continued to empty as I gave, but was unwilling to receive.
Not because it didn’t desire love, but because it no longer found itself worthy of receiving it.
This was my lie.
And I had plenty of reasons to confirm its accuracy.
Plenty of reasons to doubt.
The change took place in my heart slowly over time.
Lie after lie crept in and stole my joy, my innocence, my life.
I became emptier and emptier.
I became starving.
And what happens when a starving person steals food to survive?
We all have in some way or another snatched a piece of bread and ravenously devoured it in order to survive.
Then we pray that there is grace for the depravity of our hearts.
That we would be seen for our starvation and not our stealing.
Or perhaps we feel as though stealing was the only way to get back what was stolen from us.
We doubt.
The Light became more and more difficult to see.
Uncertainty crept in.
Lies reformed my Image.
And oh, how I believed them.
The Lies had a way of shaping me.
They had a way of owning me.
Of telling me who I was, and whose I wasn’t.
I doubted.
When faced with undeniably painful circumstances, we have two options.
And both are equally logical in nature.
We can believe God is good, or we can doubt the goodness of His nature.
I doubted.
But I don’t think He blamed me for my doubts.
Because given the evidence, both are equally rational conclusions.
And to doubt Him also meant that I had at one time placed a trust in Him that was broken.
Doubt confirms trust.
Job doubted the goodness of God’s nature given his injustice, and the Lord stated that he had "spoken of him what is right”.
Job was honest.
And perhaps doubt digs deeper caverns into our souls where seeds can be planted.
It’s a means of emptying to fill - doubting to trust.
One cannot fully trust without a sense of doubt.
What would the risk be if there were no uncertainty?
To avoid doubt would only be a form of blindness.
There are always reasons to doubt God’s goodness.
And there are always reasons to trust that He is good.
And both are True.
Because in both of those circumstances, He is God and we are Dust.
I felt Him reaching for me yesterday.
I felt Him reaching in the playful laughter of a baby girl.
I felt Him reaching in the kind eyes of a friend.
And I felt Him reaching in a sweet tone of voice that was only meant for me.
And though it doesn’t undo all of the Lies that have deformed me, it planted a different seed.
It planted the opposite of what had been growing the past 8 months.
Hope.
And I now trust more deeply that this seed will grow.
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