scraping

A week ago I read through the paper of the woman I'm tutoring through her master's program--it's the story of her life, re-constructing the journey of her personal development, bricks of her experience mortared together with theoretical constructions of psychologists. Her life, summarized in ten white pages, is an eloquent picture of God's intervention & protection--her present faith solid, a wall of confidence in his ability to provide for every need, despite the hurts and darkness of the past. I stop looking for comma splices to wonder how to get to this point where having faith seems like breathing.

My faith seems more like having an asthma attack. One day I think, "Wow, I've got it, this breathing thing..." It's just in and out, in and out; my lungs feel light, full of air. But the next minute I'm scraping the air for oxygen. Leave me alone with my thoughts for two minutes and my fears fill my lungs with concrete. "Oh ye of little faith..."

I read her paper and I'm envious of this surety--does it grow like this eventually, if you keep trying long & hard enough?

I think of my Grandma Florence, a veritable amazon of faith, speaking life into people so fully & frequently that we were lucky to not catch a busy signal when we tried to call her house. I miss her now, wish I could dial her number, ask her how she got there. What was the secret that made her words strong & resonant like the voice of a prophet?

Today, as the rain breaks against my windshield, blurring tail lights into soft red on 694, I think of all the things I can't see the end of, and I remember that it's daily..."take up your cross daily," and I'm oddly comforted by the thought. Maybe faith is found in the building up of days upon days of cross-bearing, burden-casting, continual asking, and waiting. Perhaps it isn't ever happened upon suddenly and is more like a far-off scene slowly being brought into focus.