Faith wasn’t my strength.

My heart didn’t understand it and my thoughts couldn’t comprehend an idea that was overused and underlived. It presented itself to me as a code word only used by those sitting in the cushioned pews with the well kept Bible resting orderly beside them.

And it wasn’t a part of my life.

So I walked and believed that I wasn’t a woman with enough faith, a woman who wasn’t spiritual or holy enough to stand firm on all that word represented. It was just an idea that I would hide in the closet until I desperately needed it or could finally understand it.

I walked through my race struggling to understand the decisions that a lifestyle of living in relationship with God required; the daily choices and the constant battle to say “yes” with my mouth even when my heart was a little slower on the uptake. It was frustrating and it was hard.

Because I longed for the moments where He would sweep me off my feet; not the ones where He stood as my teacher encouraging discipline and obedience to learn the new steps He had for us.

I wanted the feeling, not the faith.
The dance, not the practice.

But somewhere along the way I began to realize the choice He was inviting me to make. I started to grasp all that it required, all that it meant and all that one conscious decision could do.

It wasn’t to simply choose God. It was deciding to believe that He was everything He said He was.

Regardless.

This month hasn’t been any different.

And as everything I have walked through led me to the roof one midnight morning, I let Him know exactly how I felt. In every intentional word and frustrated tone, through the anger and the tears and the want to just scream it all out, I continued to pace, back and forth, forth and back; speaking my mind and making sure the God of all creation knew where I stood.

And I continued to pace, allowing the spotty wet roof to leave footprints of my steps while the lights of the city sparkled back at me. The clouds covered the moon with a dreariness and sat on the mountains like a blanket until my pace finally slowed and He gave me another choice.

“What are you going to believe?”

And despite the frustration I knew my answer because my heart had already made it. It was the same response I had given Him time and time again.

“But you didn’t have to make it. You didn’t and you don’t have to continually choose Him, to choose faith, to believe in who He is.” That’s what I heard him say as I recounted my night, my day and my month. “You didn’t have to.”

But I have come to believe that there is no other option.

I don’t actually have a choice in the matter anymore because my head knowledge has transferred down to my heart and has become a part of everything I believe and everything I know to be true.

It is a part of who I am.

And maybe it isn’t just a word kept in the closet for a rainy day or a go to answer when everything is falling apart. Maybe it’s the action of a choice made simply to believe what He says. And I don’t know if that makes me a woman of faith and I surely don’t believe I’m spiritual or holy enough to stand firm on everything that it means.

I just know that when I’ve found myself down on my knees, it’s the only thing I can feel beneath me.