Doubt

I know Georgia Mae is a pop culture blog, but sometimes I need to work out some personal issues through my writing and since I no longer have a column, I figure the best place to spill my guts is here.

Sometimes I feel as if I struggle with doubt more than any other Christian I know. Through the years that doubt has taken on many different forms – doubt about if Jesus is who the preachers say he is, doubt about whether God is really a loving creator and doubt about whether he cares anything about me.

Fortunately, my struggles with these doubts have ended. But they have been replaced with a new one – Will my husband and I prosper in Birmingham?

As many of you know, in July Edd and I left our jobs and our adorable condo in Louisville to move to Birmingham. We moved in part because I was offered an awesome teaching job but we had plans to move to Birmingham long before this opportunity arose.

In April my husband said he felt God wanted us to move to Birmingham. This may sound presumptuous, but Edd has been talking about moving back to Virginia (where he was born and raised) since the day I met him. So if he’s recommending we move somewhere else it had to have been God who placed that thought in his mind. That same month he found the posting for the teaching gig. A month later I was offered the job.

Of course, the idea that I would take this job without Edd having one lined up as well was scary, especially in this economy. But we took the leap because we were sure this was what God wanted. But now October is just around the corner and my husband is still unemployed.

My husband has the patience of Job, but I’m simply not that strong.

I keep reviewing notes I scribbled in my prayer journal this summer: “The righteous will live by faith.” “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
And the note that keeps haunting me: “Faith must exist in your heart and in your mouth.”

I know that I am supposed to demonstrate my faith by declaring to anyone who will listen that I am confident everything will be fine. But I can’t. So I simply say nothing. I avoid talking to friends because I don’t know how to answer the question “How are things going?” without doubt taking over my tongue.

I’m afraid to declare Edd will find a great job and we will have a prosperous life here because if it doesn’t turn out that way not only will I look like a fool but my God will seem unfaithful. But if I had faith in my heart these worries wouldn’t cross my mind in the first place.

The fact that I have doubt is silly. When it comes to jobs God has parted the Red Sea for us before. Weeks before I finished grad school in California, Edd and I were in a panic over our future. After being 3,000 miles apart for two years we desperately wanted to be in the same city, but my only job offer was in Philadelphia. Then two days after my graduation I got a phone call and was offered a job in Louisville for which I hadn’t even applied.

So with this post I’m confessing my faith and burying my doubt. I trust and believe that my husband and I will prosper in Birmingham. And while thumbing through my prayer journal last night I came across this: “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”