Faith
(noun)
1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
2. The substance of things hoped for.
When you read those two definitions of faith, do you see why you’ve lost your faith after your child’s death? When my son died at 12 weeks old I lost complete trust and confidence in God and life. I lost all hope. I was angry. I yelled at God, “WHY DID YOU DO THIS? YOU GAVE HIM TO US FOR A REASON. I’M SO ANGRY WITH YOU! I DON’T LIKE YOU! I’M SO MAD…AHHHHHH!!!!!” I sobbed on my kitchen floor feeling completely defeated and betrayed by the one thing that was supposed to always have my back and never let me down; God.
I wanted to reject God and have nothing to do with Him ever again, but He had other plans. As much as I wanted Him gone, I knew I needed God to help me get through this. Before I came to that realization I yelled at Him again because it honestly felt good to yell at someone and blame someone else for my child being gone. It took time and it took a daily practice, but I eventually let go and let God.
As I’m typing this, I really think there are 4 aspects of restoring your faith and the first would be letting yourself be angry at God, the world, whomever because in order to restore it, it’s got to be broken down first. These are the 3 ways I restored my faith after my son died.
- Daily Affirmation or Faith Phrase
- Daily gratitude practice
- Listening to a song when doubt creeps in
Create a daily affirmation or what I like to call a faith phrase. You can do this by writing a new one every day or using the same one over and over again. Sometimes I’ll choose more than one and sometimes I’ll also repeat the same one daily because it’s my focus. Examples of a faith phrase: “I find joy daily in the little things.” “I am confident and speak life into myself and others.” “I am worthy of love.”
Start a daily gratitude practice. This might sound like Mission Impossible to you, but trust me, you can do this. Some days it’ll be big things like being thankful for your job or your spouse, but other days it can be as small as being thankful for your bed. There truly isn’t anything too small to be grateful for. Write out, “I am thankful for…” every day. It’s even better if you write one in the morning and one at night.
Lastly, find a song that speaks to you. This song should lift you up and give you hope, not bring you down. It should make you want to get up off the couch or out of your bed. I started with one song, then I eventually added more. I now have a playlist on YouTube that I go to any time I need that reminder. My very first song was, “Counting Every Blessing” by Rend Collective. It’s a song that did make me cry sometimes, okay a lot of times, but cry because it made me feel grateful for my life when I didn’t want to feel grateful for my life.
There is a secret to restoring your faith though. Here it is:
First, do each of these things I mentioned every day(preferably in the morning). Second for your faith phrase and gratitude statement, it’s best if you write them out AND read them out loud even if you’re repeating yourself. There is magic in putting pen to paper and there is magic in speaking words out loud. Lastly, give yourself grace. My goal was 30 days when I did this. I finished the whole 30 days, but I didn’t do it perfectly. There were days that I forgot, but I told myself that it was okay as long as I kept going and finished.
Has your faith been restored? If so, please tell me, what would you add to this list? I have three questions I want to leave you with. Don’t answer them for me. Answer them for YOU.
What is your faith phrase? What are you thankful for? What is your faith song?
