Day 30- Ways you believe you have grown over the past thirty days.

During the last 30 days, once again my "deep water" faith has been challenged.     It is something that we have talked about in our middle school ministry Sunday School class.    I have had the Casting crowns song ‘Somewhere in the middle’ running through my mind a lot.   In that song there is a line, “Deep water faith in the shallow end”.    

Do you remember learning to swim?    You start out on the side of the pool in the shallow end.    Maybe even with those blow up floaties.     Pretty soon you have a little more confidence and take off those floaties.    Soon you may even trust yourself to swim to an adult in the middle.       But eventually you know that you want to venture out to the deep end.

Faith is kind of like that.    We all start out in the shallow end of the pool.    But our skills grow as we test our faith.     However, sometimes it is easy to get stuck in the shallow in of the pool.   You are just far enough end to be wet and somewhat swimming, but not quite out of your safety zone.     Your feet are still tiptoeing to touch the bottom, but you aren't quite willing to take that step over the edge and go to the place where you have to completely trust.

This year has been a year of deep water faith to me.     I don't really think that I have had a lot of chance to slowly tiptoe my way into the deep end as much as it has been the "sink or swim" approach.    I feel like I have been thrown into the deep end with all the circumstances in our family.

This past month we have been dealing with some health struggles for Big Guy.     He has been sick since June and we have been working with doctors at Blair Batson Children's Hospital for the past month running a ton of tests trying to find answers for him.      You are moms.   You know.    You would much rather be sick than see your child sick.      When you are going through tests and doctor appointments and day after day of watching your child in pain, it requires a lot of faith, prayer and pure trust.

I am learning that being thrown into the deep end means one of two things... panic and drown in our circumstances OR swim using the faith skills we have.   My "swimming" might not be pretty, but I know that I am being watched by the best Lifeguard ever.