Some people seem to come by faith naturally. It’s effortless for them. They just have it. My paternal grandmother was like this, at least that’s how it seemed to me as a child. 

I don’t remember a time, or even a moment, when my grandmother was not a faithful servant of God. She emanated faithfulness in both word and deed, and she was as close to a saint as I have ever known or may ever know. To this day, even having been gone from this world for many years, when I imagine what it means to be a Christian, I imagine her. 

For myself, however, faith has not come easy. It has been a slow, educational process over a long period of time. As prideful as this may sound, God has had to prove himself to me over the course of many years in order for me to trust that he loves me and is actively working in my life to draw me closer to him. 

In fact, for many years, even though I claimed to have faith in God and to be a Christian – I always said, “I’m a Christian, just not a very good one,” to excuse myself from what I knew I wasn’t doing – I acted like an agnostic. That is, I said I trusted God, but I behaved in a way that did not prove this to be true. 

In spite of my professed faith, I tried to manage every aspect of my life. I worried about every detail, I stressed over every possibility, and I did everything in my power to never slow down because I believed that my efforts were the only thing that kept me from failing. 

I tried to control all of the variables and outcomes in my life. I wanted power over all of the people around me and, if they didn’t do what I wanted, I was embittered or enraged. I sought out management positions at all of my jobs, not just because I was a good manager or a passionate and capable leader, but because the fewer people there were above me, the more control I had and the less I had to listen to other people’s input. 

To be clear, this attitude made me good at my job. My need for power helped me succeed at work because my constant worry, my obsessive attention to detail, and my need to control my environment helped me to stay ahead of problems, outpace criticism, and predict failures before they happened. 

The problem, however, is that this way of living is exhausting. It was like a perpetual game of Whack-A-Mole that I couldn’t win. I worked so hard at playing God that I would literally work myself sick and then medicate myself with caffeine and cold remedies so that I didn’t have to stop. 

Like I said, this worked for a while. But then one day, it stopped. I hit an emotional, psychological, and spiritual wall, and I crashed. I just couldn’t keep all of the balls in the air anymore. I started to have anxiety attacks and this life I built for myself started to come crashing down on top of me. 

I turned to therapy and it helped to a degree, but something was still missing. Then, one night I was filled with so much overwhelming anxiety and self-centered fear that I couldn’t sleep and I thought I was losing my mind, I begged God for help. I had used up all of my willpower and I simply couldn’t do it anymore. I needed God’s help and he answered my prayers. 

Over the course of the past several years, God has been showing me that the more I trust in him, the more I rely on him, and the more I put my faith in his love for me, the more he takes care of me. At first, it was not easy. When you spend as many years as I did trying to control everything, faith in anything or anyone, especially someone or something you can’t even see, is hard to come by. But over time, as I learned to pray not just as a matter of habit, but with the sincerity of a dying man, the Lord started to reveal himself to me. 

This happened sometimes in small ways and sometimes in big ways, but it happened and continues to happen consistently. To the degree that I rely on him does he take care of me. In this way, faith is an act of vulnerability because it means I must put my life into God’s hands without knowing what the outcome is going to be. He gives me just enough light to see the next step forward, but the rest of the journey is unlit and unknown to me – except that it isn’t. 

God’s promises are very clear and his word is always true. If I trust him, he will never fail me. Things will always work out for the best. They may not work out the way I imagined, but they will work out for the best. This has been proven to me time and time again, even if I’m a slow learner. 

Whereas my grandmother’s faith seemed to just come to her, that her faith in and faithfulness toward God defined her character and her existence, or at least that’s how it seemed to me, mine has been a slow work in progress. I suppose you could call my faith “blue collar faith” because it has been built brick-by-brick, one piece at a time, over the course of many years. 

Neither type of faith is better or worse, mind you. The Lord loves each of us infinitely and unconditionally, for and as we are. It’s just that everyone’s faith comes to them in different ways and at different times in their lives. Or maybe I’m just stubborn. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

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