Lord, am I a fraud?
It’s a question I heard an author say he would want to ask Jesus if he could only ask Him one thing.
These days I understand that question more than I used to.
I came to God at such a young age. I was sitting on a swingset, telling my sister I wanted to accept Jesus into my heart. It’s one of my earliest memories.
For years, I said I came to know God at 9 years old. I remember that Sunday in our children’s church, walking to the bathroom while crying and praying. I was in one of those cycles of continuing to “pray the prayer” over and over again just to make sure. That Sunday was the last time I did that.
But looking back now, I believe that first memory on the swingset was the moment. The moment that spurred thousands of moments of repentance and recognition of my need of a Savior. The moment that began my life with God, as young as I was.
These days, though, I find it difficult to remember that childlike faith.
Nothing has changed in what I know to be true. I’ve gone through difficult seasons in my walk with God before. How could you not after walking with God for more than 30 years?
I wrestled through my parents’ separation and divorce, and everything that boiled up out of that mess. I wrestled with the extreme illnesses of a parent, periods of discontentment when I was single into my late 20s, and after marriage, long years of infertility.
Those seasons helped me to wrestle with the question we all have to ask at some point as believers: Is God still who He says He is when everything is falling apart?
The truth has always been wrestled into my mind first, then worked its way into my heart and emotions. I’ve always been able to eventually submit to God’s goodness, through the power of the Holy Spirit, regardless of where circumstances ended up.
Until this last year.
When my son died six months into my pregnancy, and I was still carrying my other little boy, I had many painful prayers and a lot of wrestling. But I had a sense of acceptance in my heart. I knew the truth and was trusting and submitting to God, even though I was devastated.
When I buried my little boy days after his brother entered the world, though, something seemed to shift.
The entire grieving process started all over again. And this time, I felt anger rather than acceptance. Resistance rather than submission. Emptiness rather than His presence.
Those feelings have continued for more than a year now.
These emotions don’t change anything I know to be true. God was and is still sovereign, even though it’s a challenge to walk that tightrope of His sovereignty and the brokenness of the world.
But this time around, my heart can’t quite reconcile itself to what my mind knows. Many days I feel as if I am still kicking and screaming against the One who holds me, the One who saves me.
And on my most difficult days, I hear that question: “Lord, am I a fraud?”
How can I so deeply know the truth within myself and yet feel unable to accept everything that has happened in the last couple of years?
My guess is it will take time, but I truly don’t know. Maybe this will never change. Maybe my feelings will never fully reconcile to what I know to be true.
That doesn’t make it any less true, though, does it? Who God is — His word and His truth — they never change.
So can I accept that? Can I accept the dissonance between what I know to be true and what I feel?
I’ll do it, if that’s what He asks of me. Not because I am strong, but because He is strong enough to help me do that.
That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I beg God for.
Even on the days I feel like a fraud.
Unshaken Joy 