Common Threads

This month’s Spiritual Journey is hosted by Patricia Franz, who has selected doubt as the theme. You can read her post here. It’s quite inspiring, and I particularly love her insight as she shares her thinking on doubt: I’m convinced that doubt lives in the imperfect space between who we are and who we think we want to be.

Since Patricia’s post last Thursday, I’ve returned again and again to this idea, toying with doubt and how it plays out in my own life in risks not taken and opportunities not seized. Fear and doubt are close friends with deeply intertwining roots. And what is doubt’s opposite? Certainty? Trust? Belief? In Hebrews, the Bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So by that definition, faith is the opposite of doubt.

I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomas, but I will be the first to confess that I may score a perfect 10 in Olympic skepticism. My mother’s keen eye for scrutiny and her innate sense of intuition, passed on to her from her mother – and hers before her – ended up in me and my own children. It’s a form of doubt, yes, and on the Myers-Briggs Personality test it’s that gnawing J for judging in the analytics that gets me, where I’d much prefer be a perceiver.

I do some doubting.

But I also do some praying. Nearly a decade ago, I made the decision to turn off the radio and the audiobooks on the way to work and use the drive as my dedicated prayer time each morning. My drive to the office is roughly 8 to 10 minutes, and I pray for each of our children, their mates, and their children. I pray for each side of our extended family and always add “even the ones we don’t like,” because, you know, God already knows about that whole mess.

At the end of Patricia’s post, she shares that she tries to cultivate doubt as a spiritual practice– deepening my capacity to sit with questions; allowing space for the sacred pause; learning to be comfortable living in the mystery. This, too, resonates deeply with me this morning as I write in my favorite green chair in the living room, my Schnoodle Boo Radley draped over the back of my chair near my neck, and his rescued brothers Fitz and Ollie snoozing on the floor at complete peace with the world around them, doubting nothing more than the intentions of every deer and squirrel in the yard.

Like Patricia, I need to embrace my doubts and celebrate them as gutterball rails to be used to discern correct steps where I ask the Lord to illuminate the paths I should take. Just like that concept of Danish hygge that I love so much in the winter – – we can’t have the concept of hygge, or the warmth and comfort within the cozy cabin, without the raging blizzard outside. The feeling of warmth and comfort has to have its opposite somewhere to be appreciated.

Such is doubt. In the tiny cabin of the heart and soul, where the storms of doubt rage outside, faith is the strong assurance that despite the weatherman or his alarmist reports, all will be well as we trust the good Lord and His plan. Faith shines most brightly in the threat of doubt.