Another New Chapter in Our Lives

I woke up this morning coughing. It's been around for a few days but I really haven't been paying much attention to it. I have too many other things on my mind and in my life to concentrate on a little tickle in the back of my throat. Then it struck me. That cough, that nagging little bit of hacking going on, has been just like a Crisis of Faith (herein known as the COF). It was something I didn't notice when it first started. I simply swallowed a bit of COF syrup and threw myself into the activities of being a pastor's wife. The syrup placated the tickle and I was able to continue functioning at the same level I had been at before. But something was different. Without realizing it, I put a bandage over the symptoms and went my merry way, not giving the COF a second thought. As long as I could function, why should I bother about occasional evidence that something might be wrong? I was still going to church – well, most of the time. I was still doing Bible study – okay, sometimes the day before I was supposed to teach. I was still living a morally upright lifestyle – after all, I am the pastor's wife.

On the morning this COF outline was born, I was preparing to teach, yet again, through 1 and 2 Peter. It was all laid out. With several chapters already done, broken down from the Greek and put into context, I was reluctant to change anything at such a late date. But the niggling in my gut would not go away. Within 20 minutes, I had a new outline.

But it isn't verse by verse through a book in the Bible! What about my co-teacher who has already put in a lot of effort in Peter? What about the flyers I have arranged in my head and was getting ready to print? Yes, I argued with God. I pulled out every excuse in my arsenal not to go ahead with a different study. But He wouldn't leave me alone.

I didn't even realize it then that God was personalizing the new outline just for me. I initially assumed it was going to be about passion – our passion for Him and His for us. I was wrong. It is an outline on something I never considered I would have – a Crisis of Faith.

I grew up in church. I have been a Christian for over 20 years. I have been a pastor's wife for 10. We have had many crises in our lives, from marital to financial to health-related. If a crisis were going to occur in my faith, it would have been three years ago when our then 22-year-old son was in a car accident that left him brain-injured and paralyzed from the rib cage down; it would have happened when not just one but two of my grandchildren wound up in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit after birth; it would have happened when we were broke and didn't know how we would pay the bills; it would have happened when I wondered if my marriage would survive; it would have happened … There were so many times it could have happened at a tremendous crossroad in our lives but it didn't.

The point is, it happened. It didn't come into my life like a hurricane but rather as a small, soft zephyr. It didn't come into my life as a major trauma but rather as a gentle tickle in the back of my throat, something easily ignored or covered up with service and doing my duty. Though I didn't realize it then, it was something that, left untreated, could damage me beyond repair and maybe even cause me to willingly walk away from the best thing that has ever happened in my life. Jesus.