For me, the toughest phase of parenting kids was when they had grown up, left home and then began to traverse that icy lake of questioning everything we had taught and lived. That was the toughest.
I remember the phone call to this day. I was in the Ontario Airport and Gabri and I were chatting while I was waiting to catch my next plane, and I said something that caught her and we stopped to talk further about it. It was a memory. It was when she was little -- around 5 -- and then I prayed frequently with her through the stuff encountering her 5-year-old life by walking her through the memory, the encounter, by looking for Jesus and allowing him to meet her there.
In her young life she had many opportunities for such times since life felt hard to the youngest with three strong, dynamic, older sisters, and two busy parents. But in each, Gabri gave herself to the moment, experienced Jesus and watched him unravel the fears, meet the hurt, and cradle her heart.
Then, in that phone conversation as I sat on the bench against the windows, just through the security area at the Ontario Airport, leaning against the pillar with the galvanized steel look, and looking over towards where the entrance to the women’s bathroom was, as was the exit of the terminal, as people hurried past me, Gabri was saying, “I don’t think those things really happened. I just think I made them up.”
To say I was grieved for her is the understatement of the century. I had been there. I had seen God move. To deny that felt to me like denying God Himself. But I knew better, somehow, not to argue with her, but to say, “Really? I remember those times as very significant and real. That feels hard to hear that you are doubting them.”
That was quite a long time ago now, about five years, and Gabri has done a ton of questioning since then, and a ton of growing from “our faith” into her “own faith.” That I celebrate. But I’ll never forget the feelings that surged through me during that phone call, nor the sense that I’d lost her forever.
You know those thoughts, right? I’m not the only one who creates a catastrophe from a normal circumstance…
But it is instructive to me that faith is a journey, not a destination. It is a word -- believe -- but it is more than a word. If you cannot doubt what you believe, then, your beliefs are rather flimsy. Everyone walks through seasons of sincere doubt, of question, of heartache. Gabri had her own “dark night” as she questioned everything and dug down until she hit solid rock and built anew her own faith upon that firm foundation.
In this week’s passage, Jesus embraces the wild request of one disciple who says, “I’ll not believe unless…” and laid down his particular desires. In this passage we see Jesus’ immense love and willingness for that disciple and for us to doubt, to struggle, to wrestle with faith. As a friend wrote: “No matter where you are going, what you are doing or what you are facing, the most important thing you can carry with you is faith. It is always okay to ask questions and even lean on other people’s faith for a while, but there will be times as well when others will need to lean on your faith in their own times of doubt.”
Come to Sunday worship, 9:00 am Sunday, bring your doubts, bring your fears and encounter Jesus with Thomas afresh. There is no doubt that Jesus cannot handle. And there is no faith that doesn’t need strengthening. There is perhaps no one’s story quite as poignant as Thomas’ to point us to the need to embrace Jesus with our doubts and watch how he handles them and embraces us. Doubts don’t frighten Jesus away, at all. Let’s live with faith.