Tag: Christianity

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Spiritual Journey: Doubt

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.

in a world of doubt

we can choose the light of faith

to guide us through storms

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Bendable, Poseable Jesus

The Easter holiday before Dad died, I sent him a Bendable, Poseable Jesus of Nazareth. Back before we knew just how sick he was because he kept preaching and going to book sales and doing all the other things he always did, I thought it looked like just the kind of thing he could use for a children’s sermon or could work into some story he was telling. I must confess that I thought it was a bit funny, too, this Bendable, Poseable Jesus figure- – because the adjectives just seem silly, as if the product might sell on name alone. As if Jesus had ever posed for a selfie or been a contortionist.

Imagine my surprise when I found this gift still unopened in the package in the guest room after Dad died. I was going through all the boxes, and up popped Jesus in his Jesus sandals and robes. I decided to take him back home with me. With the way my year has gone throughout 2025, I need all the Jesus I can get.

As we packed to leave for Tennessee for a week with our children and grandchildren, I gathered colored pencils and games, puzzles, and toys to take for the week. I also grabbed Jesus, still packaged, to come along for the ride.

He spent the first couple of days in the kitchen window just in case I got tempted to say any words that would not be appropriate around children. And to remind me to be kind and patient and all the other fruits of the spirit.

Eventually, one of the grandchildren opened him and took him out of the plastic and cardboard, posing and bending the figure and playing with it. Even the baby of the bunch, Silas, got in on the Jesus action.

Silas, checking out Jesus

They played Peek-a-Boo, which may have reminded my daughter of the way my late parents hid a Waldo figure for each other to find. She began hiding Jesus and challenging all the cousins to find him.

Countless times throughout the days, they would play this game, taking turns hiding and finding. My son came up from the game room and asked what they were doing.

“We’re finding Jesus,” they all shouted, in unison. The look on his face was priceless.

On our last day, Jesus was in the middle of a good hide. We’d not seen him since the day before, and we almost forgot him, when my daughter remembered him and asked, “Where’s Jesus?”

Saylor, the oldest granddaughter who’d been the last to hide him, ran back inside and then returned shortly, carrying him out to the car.

“We can’t leave Jesus in Tennessee,” she exclaimed.

Nope, and we didn’t. Jesus is safely packed back in the bag to be hidden again on our next trip together. He’s a part of our daily lives, yes – – but on vacation, He will come along and play all the games with the children, and abide with the adults in a very chaperoning way.

We need as much of Him as we can get.

We all need Jesus

to remind us to be kind

to seek Him daily

Mallory and Beckham with Bendable, Poseable Jesus
With 6 of our 7 grandchildren – Beckham, Saylor, Magnolia Mae (Noli), Sawyer holding Silas, and River
Our 4 – Ansley, Andrew, Marshall, and Mallory
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Remembering Israel Throughout Hanukkah

I’m a fan of author Tom Ryan. My strongest reading personality is that of a non-fiction reader, where the reading takes me into the lives of people and places I may never meet or see in person. I also like fiction, but I believe that my life has been changed far more from the non-fiction reading I’ve ever done than from the fiction. Tom Ryan’s love of his rescue dog Atticus (a Schnauzer) in his book Following Atticus and his rich descriptions of hiking the White Mountains for a friend who was dying of cancer is just the type of book that grabs my heart.

The first question anyone asks me when I recommend the book is, “Does the dog die?” No, not in the first book. But the friend with cancer does, and Tom hikes and eats a vegetarian diet because he nearly did. Will’s Red Coat was the second book by Tom Ryan, and of course this one holds a few more tears when he adopts an aging rescue dog and brings it to the summit – not just the mountain, but the summit of life itself. And if there were ever a beautiful dog death, Will experienced it.

I shared the books with my friend Jayne, but she’d had to wait a while to read them, since she was on the heels of a dog loss herself and couldn’t face the emotions. After a time of grief, she read them and loved his books so much that she subscribed to his Substack and also gifted me a subscription as well. Now we both follow Tom Ryan on his coddiwomples around the nation when he sets out on adventures with Emily and Samwise. I’m giving the gift subscriptions to the two of us this year – – we both find that his writing soothes us and gives us a sense of joy and peace – especially when he shares his videos.

I was reading a post a couple of days ago that he invited subscribing readers to make public after three days. You can read it here. As I was reading about the support for his Jewish readers by Christian readers who were requesting Hanukkah cards from him this year (he sends them out for certain levels of membership), I came to this sentence: “I’m right there with you, folks, and this non-practicing Irish Catholic will have my electric menorah in my window each night of Hanukkah.” He closed by stating he wasn’t sure whether this would help during such troubling times, but wanted to assure them that they were not alone.

That lit a spark in me, just like those Christmas eve candles that people light from flame to flame down an entire row until the whole church is glowing.

I made a decision right there to join Tom Ryan by doing the same thing. I ordered a menorah with candles that will sit on a table next to our Christmas tree. Let me make it clear that I’m not converting religions. Let me make it equally clear that I’m strong enough in my own religious beliefs that I don’t feel threatened by inviting another religious symbol into my home. That’s not who we are. Our roots of Christianity are firmly attached to Judaism with Abraham at the helm, and my belief system includes Father Abraham and his tribe as a part of the lineage so important to my own Christian roots. My arms and heart are big enough to reach out. We will embrace our Jewish friends, honor their beliefs, and pause to think of them and the injustices that they are suffering.

To set up a menorah with its candles that we will light beginning on December 7 is to embrace an entire culture of people under attack who cannot light their own this year. To light the candle each evening will be to hold sacred moments for innocent people who are under attack by those who are evil, who will never know the peace of a silent night.

I want to thank Tom Ryan for inspiring me to join hands with him and to be reminded that we are, all of us, able to make choices about how we respond to situations. In a world where we can be anything, we should at the very least be kind souls who stand by others, whether we practice their same beliefs or not. After all, I have to believe that Jesus, the King of the Jews, whom we serve, will be tearfully embracing us all as we share in the sorrows of mankind.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com