Dear friend,
Immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, “I believe. Help my unbelief!”
I keep thinking about how doubting shows up not as one dramatic collapse but as a low static that runs under ordinary days, so that you find yourself saying the old words at church and wondering, distantly, if you mean them anymore.
I am not going to argue you out of it this morning. I want to name it plainly instead, because I have noticed that people often try to solve doubting before they have even finished describing it, and something gets lost in the hurry.
In Mark 9:24, a father says he believes and asks for help with his unbelief in the same breath, to Jesus himself, without apparently seeing any contradiction in it. Nobody tells him to resolve that sentence before he is heard. I notice the text does not make him wait until his belief is tidy. Whatever happens next in that story happens to a man who is still divided.
I don't know what your doubting is made of yet, whether it is grief wearing a theological coat or something that has been building for years under a calm surface. What does it feel like when it is loudest for you?
A prayer
God, You already know the parts of her belief that feel solid and the parts that have gone thin. Meet her in the divided place without asking her to pretend otherwise. Amen.