cringe (Fine, me. I’m most people) and stop listening as soon as it comes out of someone’s mouth, they read it in an article, or see it on a meme with a Southern lady wearing a T-shirt with “Too Blessed to Be Stressed” printed across it. And honestly, just typing that out made my eyes immediately roll back in my head.

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So call it whatever you want, but I’m beyond grateful for this gift I was given long before I had any idea just how profoundly it would affect my life.

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I grew up with parents who loved me, and it wasn’t something I ever once had to question. They told me, showed me, and proved it over and over again, even when I didn’t deserve it. I learned how to pray and memorized Bible verses around the same time I learned how to walk and talk.

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Don’t get me wrong, if you were to run across the novel version of our story, it would not read anything like a fairytale. Some chapters would read more like a nightmare-inducing Stephen King book, minus the clowns, thankfully. But through every single chapter of our lives, my parents, our village of “aunts and uncles,” and family both blood and chosen, all lived their faith out loud and taught us to do the same.

Have I always followed their example? No.

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But did I always remember the lessons I learned or put the wisdom I was surrounded by into practice?

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Unfortunately, also no.

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Sometimes I don’t learn lessons the first time. Or the third. Apparently, occasionally I need the lesson presented in several different formats, preferably accompanied by a flashing neon sign.

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So when I talk with people who didn’t grow up going to a church that showed them all about God’s love, singing songs that taught them to worship with their whole heart, I realize how much I took for granted.

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Because through all of the highs and lows in my life, even when I was busy making a mess of things or ignoring the little voice in my head trying to keep me from digging a deeper hole for myself, I still knew that no matter how far I ran away, God was only a whisper away.

Prayer has always been just a conversation to me. Not that I took it lightly, or at least not consciously, but it was so baked into my earliest core memories that my relationship with God as an adult is, in some respects, very simple, connected, and uncomplicated because it’s so deeply rooted in a childlike faith in His love and faithfulness.

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I talk to God like He’s sitting right there, because I believe He is. I find joy and peace in worship because I believe music creates a unique connection all on its own, one that ties our spirits to something much bigger than ourselves and has the power to move even the heart of our Creator.

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For some people, that’s such a foreign or abstract concept that it can feel like something just out of their reach. Those feelings can alienate people from the church - and by church I mean the people, not just a building full of people with a pretty sign out front.

So many of us make our relationship with Jesus look easy, like something that just comes naturally. Or we try to explain it to someone and don’t have the right words, unintentionally driving home the idea that they won’t ever quite measure up.

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I know I’ve done it.

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Trying to find the right way to describe something that can’t possibly be captured or contained by mere words, I wonder how many times I’ve been a deterrent. How many times have I made someone feel further away from the one thing they were desperate to find instead of being the light that pointed them directly into His arms?

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Obviously, I am not in the running as the poster child for a good Christian girl. I have made a very, very long list of bad decisions, many of which I knew full well were bad decisions while I was in the middle of making them. I have ignored what I knew I should be doing because I was selfish or scared or cared more about people liking me than doing what was right. I’ve failed in a thousand different ways - not being who I was meant to be out of fear, or laziness, or sometimes just plain willful ignorance.

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But I do know some important truths.

• I know that faith isn’t the absence of doubt.

• I know that loving Jesus doesn’t magically make life easy.

• I know that prayer doesn’t always change circumstances in the way we desperately want it to, and sometimes the answer we get is one we would very much like to send back with the receipt.

• I know there have been seasons when I have prayed with complete confidence and seasons when my prayers have been little more than, “God, I don’t even know what to say.”

• And I know He was there for both.

 

Maybe that’s one of the things we get wrong when we try so hard to explain faith to other people. We think we need to give them answers when sometimes what they really need is permission to come without any.

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Without the right words. Without knowing the songs. Without understanding Scripture. Without having their life cleaned up first. Without being certain of anything except maybe the tiniest hope that there could be Someone listening.

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Because if I strip away all the church language, the theology I’ve learned, the verses I’ve memorized, and the years of experiences that have shaped my faith, what remains is surprisingly simple:

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I have never had to earn my way back to God.

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Not when I wandered. Not when I screwed up. Not when I knew better and did it anyway. Not when I was angry with Him, confused by Him, disappointed, exhausted, or barely holding myself together.

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He was still only a whisper away.

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And maybe living our faith out loud isn’t about having the perfect words to explain why we believe what we believe. Maybe it’s less about convincing people that we have found all the answers and more about showing them what it looks like to be loved while we’re still figuring things out ourselves.

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Maybe being a light doesn’t mean shining so brightly that everyone notices us.

Maybe it simply means making it a little easier for someone else to see Him.

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Because seasons change. The easy ones eventually become hard, and the ones that feel impossibly heavy eventually give way to something else. We will celebrate and grieve, get things right and spectacularly wrong, feel close to God and sometimes wonder where He went.

But the gift I was given so many years ago wasn’t a life untouched by hard seasons.

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It was knowing I would never have to walk through one alone.

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And if there is anything worthwhile I can do with that gift now, I hope it’s not to make faith look effortless.

I hope it’s to leave the door open behind me.

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“Grace is something you can never get but can only be given.”

Frederick Buechner