Doubts

“Why did you doubt?”

Jesus asks Peter this question as he pulls him out of the depths of the sea. After a very tough few weeks, I found myself asking not why did I doubt, but why do I doubt.

I’ve been thinking a lot about doubt lately. I think doubt is rooted in human nature, it happens so often that most of the time we might not realize what we’re experiencing is doubt. I think the root of doubt comes from the unknown in life, and in that unknown there’s a lot of feelings that come up. In faith, I think doubt comes from the unknown of God or a higher power, which there can be a lot of. And yet, even with all the unknowns of God or the higher power, we know them because of love that we experience through one another. We may not recognize it in that way, but there is something deeply rooted in us that causes us to love, something that we cannot fully explain, and so we just live it out to each other. We pull each other out of the depths of the water. It’s this doubt that brings us together to move forward, to love forward. And yet there may even be times where a younger version of ourselves has to come and pull us out of the depths and say “let’s go we’re not done yet” because we can get so caught up in all that we aren’t instead of recognizing that we are the person who the younger us looks us to and dreamt of being for so long.

The world feels so heavy right now with everything going on because we’re so full of doubt. We don’t think things will get better or our voice will be heard or that we’ll make a difference and yet the worst of times can bring out the best of us. I think now is the most important time to pull each other out of the depths and allow each other to live out who we really are, that’s what we’re called to do. We’re not called to let people drown and shut them out and think that we’re better just because of one thing or another. We pull each other into our love so that through the experience of love we recognize not only that we’re not alone but that we’re going to be ok and that who we are is who we’re meant to be.

I think the moments of doubt are the most important moments, because it’s those moments that we recognize that the grace of the love that we have and experience is sufficient and that our moments of weakness will in the end be our greatest moments of strength.