When Faith Hasn’t Fully Grown Back Yet

There is a particular kind of fear that lives in the body when the danger is not yours.

It is quieter than panic but heavier than worry. It settles into the chest and hums. It shows up when you are brushing your teeth, folding laundry, sitting in traffic, pretending to listen. It waits until the house is quiet and then asks the question you have no answer for.

What if something is wrong with my child?

Mattie has a growth in her jaw. They won’t know if it’s nothing or something until they get in there. Surgery will decide that. Waiting will not. And so we wait - with calendars marked, with a clock ticking toward a date that feels both too close and impossibly far away.

I have lived enough life to know that uncertainty is often worse than bad news. At least bad news has edges. Uncertainty just spreads.

What complicates this moment is that my faith is… under construction.

Not gone. Not abandoned. But newly rebuilt after loss, deconstruction, grief, and disillusionment. I don’t have the old reflexes anymore. The ones that jumped straight to certainty. The ones that said, God’s got this and meant I don’t want to feel this.

Now I feel it.

I feel the fear in my throat when I look at my daughter’s face.

I feel the anger that this is even happening. Haven’t we made it through enough?

I feel the ache of wanting to protect her from things that are simply out of my reach.

Motherhood has always been an exercise in surrender, but this is a deeper cut. This is handing your child to a room full of strangers and machines and trusting that love can somehow stretch that far.

My people ask if I’m okay. The honest answer is: I am functioning. I am loving my kids well. I am showing up. And underneath that, I am afraid.

What I am learning - slowly and very, very Imperfectly - is that rebuilt faith doesn’t require me to be brave all the time.

It asks me to be honest.

I don’t know how this turns out.

I don’t know what they’ll find.

I don’t know if the prayers I offer are eloquent enough or faithful enough or formed correctly.

But I am showing up anyway.

I am keeping shaking hands busy.

I am whispering prayers that sound more like pleas.

I am choosing to believe that God is not offended by my fear or disappointed by my lack of certainty.

This kind of faith doesn’t shout.

It doesn’t perform.

It sits in a waiting room and says, “I’m here. Please be here too”.

If miracles happen, I will receive them with gratitude and awe.

If the road is harder than I want it to be, I will keep walking.

For now, this is what faith looks like for me:

Not answers - but presence.

Not confidence - but consent.

Not certainty - but the decision to stay open even when my heart wants to armor up.

I am a Mama.

I am afraid.

I am believing anyway - one breath at a time.

My Mattie Lark aka Mattie Spark, 2025