The Envy of Faith

A faith that appears steady now may have been formed during years nobody else was present to witness.

The plastic spoon had been left beside the empty bowl, its handle resting partly on a folded napkin stained faintly orange from the soup. Around us, conversations moved in uneven pockets across the church hall, some loud with laughter, others quieter as people stacked chairs or gathered their children before leaving.

Near the far wall, someone was still rinsing metal trays beneath a running tap. The sound carried softly through the room between stretches of conversation and footsteps against the tiled floor.

She had been helping clear the tables earlier, moving from one end of the hall to the other with the steady familiarity of someone who already knew where everything belonged. At some point she sat down across from me, brushing a loose strand of hair back behind her ear as she wrapped both hands around a paper cup that no longer seemed warm.

Then she smiled slightly and said something that at first sounded almost complimentary.

“I envy your faith.”

For a moment I did not answer.

The words lingered between us longer than I expected.

Around us, the room continued moving normally. Someone laughed near the doorway. A child dragged one of the plastic chairs too loudly across the floor before being told softly to stop. The fluorescent lights above us hummed faintly against the ceiling.

She spoke again after a while.

“I envy your faith.”

“I don’t think I could believe the way you do,” she said. “Not after some of the things that happened.”

Her voice carried neither bitterness nor accusation. Only weariness. The kind that appears when disappointment has remained somewhere inside a person for a long time.

I looked down briefly at the paper cup between my hands.

From the outside, perhaps it looked steadier than it had ever felt.

Years earlier, my life had once looked very different from what people knew now.

There were years when fear moved through my life quietly enough that other people would not have noticed it from the outside. Prayers repeated late at night because I did not know what else to do. Decisions made without certainty that they would end well. Long stretches where answers did not arrive as quickly as I had hoped they would.

Some prayers seemed to disappear into silence for so long that continuing to pray sometimes felt heavier than remaining quiet.

Near the serving counter, someone lifted a stack of plates too quickly and nearly dropped them. A few people turned briefly at the sound before returning to their conversations again.

She waited patiently while I searched for words that did not sound rehearsed.

It had never begun as certainty.

"Some prayers seemed to disappear into silence for so long that continuing to pray sometimes felt heavier than remaining quiet."

Through disappointment that did not immediately resolve itself. Through moments where fear remained present even after praying. Through learning that surrender often happened repeatedly rather than once.

There were prayers I repeated simply because there was nothing else left for me to hold onto. Nights where sleep came in short pieces because uncertainty kept returning before morning arrived. Situations that did not improve quickly, even after asking God repeatedly for help.

And yet, even inside those years, I had already seen God carry me through too many impossible moments to live as though He had never been there at all.

Not because life had become easy, but because I had already seen too much of God’s hand at work to return to living as though He had never carried me before.

Across the room, someone began folding the final row of chairs near the wall. The sharp metal clicks echoed briefly through the hall before settling again into quieter conversation.

Fear has a way of making people forget what once carried them through.

I thought about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. How quickly fear returned once uncertainty entered the wilderness again. How easy it became to remember slavery more clearly than deliverance once discomfort returned.

Perhaps faith survives partly through refusing to forget what God has already carried us through.

One side of the hall dimmed as someone switched off another row of fluorescent lights above the serving tables.

She looked at me quietly then.

“I wish I had that kind of faith,” she said again, though this time her voice sounded softer than before.

I understood what she meant.

But I also understood something else.

“They saw the faith,” I said quietly. “They had not seen what formed it.”

She looked at me for a moment without speaking.

They had not seen the private moments where continuing to trust God felt frightening rather than strong. The prayers spoken without certainty. The disappointments that did not immediately disappear. The repeated choosing to depend on God again while carrying unanswered questions into the next day.

Most of it had looked ordinary while it was happening.

“They saw the faith,” I said quietly. “They had not seen what formed it.”

Praying again after disappointment.

Continuing after fear.

Trying to trust God one more day without fully knowing where the road ahead would lead.

Not because life had become easy, but because remembering what God had already carried me through made it difficult to return completely to the person I had been before those years.

Around us, the last few chairs were being stacked against the wall. Someone near the kitchen entrance waved goodbye before stepping out into the night. The hall had grown quieter now, the earlier noise settling gradually into smaller pockets of conversation.

She looked down at the cup between her hands for a while before speaking again.

“I never thought about faith that way before,” she said.

Neither of us spoke much after that.

Near the doorway, one of the volunteers switched off another row of lights. Shadows moved slowly across the empty tables as the room dimmed further around us.

What remained visible now was quieter than before.

Not certainty.

Not fearlessness.

Not immediate answers to every prayer.

Only the continued choosing to trust God again, believing that unanswered prayers were still being carried in His time.

Made In His Image

You are made perfectly. Loved deeply. Never beyond hope.

Visit the Made In His Image project at: madeinhisimage.life