Idea Dust

Tag: faith

  • The Best Part of You

    The Best Part of You

    I tried writing outside, but the sun beat me to my seat.  I landed in our room, on our bed, on my side of the bed, of course.  I’m just here to wish you a happy 40th birthday.  

    I really didn’t want to dive into our love story on your birthday because this is about you, but your life has impacted mine in such a meaningful way that I can’t separate that story from the way you lived in front of me for the past 18 years, from how I came to understand the character of Jesus.

    I think the kids will like this one when they’re older.

    Summer 2008:

    I had recently moved back home from attending college in Florida.  I had a tough year in Florida and got in way too deep in a relationship.  I left mid-semester, and I was trying to start over.  A new romantic relationship was not on my radar.  

    I knew of your dad from his regular Sunday evening visits to Outback with Phil.  He always sat in another person’s section so I never served him, but I did occasionally say hello.  

    When you came to Outback with him during your summer break, Susan went back to the kitchen and said that Tommy’s youngest son was eating with him.  Ironically, she wasn’t trying to set you up with me at all. She was talking you up to the girl your dad had actually brought you there to meet. She said that you were in college, had straight As, were thinking of attending UT for your master’s, and you were a real catch.  I was curious, so I came over and said hi. Then I didn’t see you again until the end of the summer.

    She was right. You looked like a good catch. I just didn’t know then that the best part of you had nothing to do with the résumé she was sharing.

    In the meantime, I was working on myself.  My family traveled a lot and didn’t go to church, but I felt a tug I couldn’t explain that drew me closer to God.  I asked the only person I knew who went to church similar to the one I went to as a little girl, and I started driving 45 minutes on Sundays to go to church with her.  

    Then you came back to Outback, and I told you and your dad how I got kicked out of this super snobby private school because I wouldn’t go to chapel.  

    Then you asked what school it was…and we both laughed because we realized we had not been that far apart in this world after all.  You were there at the same time as me, but you were just older.

    I told you how I was going to church with Bethany, and you invited me to church with you.

    That was the church you grew up in.

    That was the church I started attending alone even when you went back to college in the Fall.

    That became the church where we got married.

    Then we moved, and it became the church we later brought our kids back to visit.

    I still love that church.

    But to tell you the complete truth, the church was only the backdrop to what I was witnessing right in front of me.  

    You changed my life and my view of Jesus.  

    I met a lot of people in that Baptist private school, but, Robert, there is no one like you.

    I was amused from the start.

    It wasn’t because you were Hit Man Jacks and Captain on the football field in high school.

    It wasn’t your conviction for the Lord.

    Or the 3.98 GPA.

    Or that you knew a lot about the Bible.

    It wasn’t that you’d spent your life quietly honoring your convictions about purity.

    Or even your confidence about heaven.

    Those things were admirable.
    They just weren’t what changed me.

    The world might label you a believer based on those merits.  

    What impacted me was much deeper, though.

    The simple truth is this: seeing Jesus in you never came from what you said about yourself.

    I had to ask, and you responded as if it were no big deal.

    That is just who you are.

    The humility of it all is exactly the fertile ground where my faith could grow taller than the surrounding weeds.

    You’ve never made me feel like you were leading me to Jesus.  You’ve always said you chose me because of my heart.  You wouldn’t have chosen someone to save.

    You’ve always made me feel like we were growing closer to Him together.

    And I never learned much from what anyone has said, but I came to know Jesus even more because of what you did to teach me.

    You’ve admitted when you were wrong without needing me to admit my part in return.

    Which, in the end, made me want to admit my part.

    I know you know more about the Bible than I do, but every time I remind you of that, you shake your head no before I can finish my sentence.

    I’ve seen you take the blame for things that aren’t your fault at work.

    You aren’t a gatekeeper to heaven with a scorecard.

    People call you when they are struggling.

    Not because they think you are perfect.

    But because they know you know you aren’t, and you’re not afraid to admit that.

    I may slip a curse word every now and then.

    I like an occasional glass of wine.

    Even still, I know you aren’t looking at me through the lens of a religious leader in the church, but rather through the loving eyes of Jesus who wants me to sit with him comfortably, even if I bring my sin and all.

    I remember when we were dating, we would lie around your apartment, and I would ask you questions about the Bible, and you would say you didn’t know the answer when you were unsure.

    You could have fooled me.

    You grew up in a Baptist school.

    You attended church every Sunday.

    You went on a Mission trip.

    You could have answered to the best of your knowledge to impress me.

    But that isn’t you.

    You are the one in the room not talking,

    while quietly carrying more wisdom than the people doing all the talking.

    That is the person who taught me how much Jesus really loves me.

    Not because we attended church.

    Not because you knew every verse in the Bible about God’s love and told me about it.

    Not because when the world was being worldly in the years before we met, you were keeping your values and convictions.

    None of that makes you the man who taught me about Jesus.

    Growing closer to Jesus with you looks like, “Let’s look that up together,” instead of “I know the answer.”

    And, “Felecia, you’ve been reading your Bible so much that you’ve encouraged me to read it more,” instead of, “This is what a holy woman does.”

    It’s that you never once—and I mean not even once—reminded me of who I was at my worst.  

    You had a lot of high horses to ride on, but for the last forty years you’ve chosen to put other people in the saddle while you quietly steer them around.

    That’s why people who are struggling call you.

    But it makes me smile too, because a lot of them don’t know you as I do, and some of them might be more nervous than I was about showing you their broken pieces if they knew the truth I knew.

    You’ll probably be uncomfortable with every word I’ve written here.

    You’ll tell me I’ve exaggerated.

    I don’t think I have.

    Happy 40th Birthday.

    Thank you for showing me what following Jesus is like more than any sermon ever could.

    I love you.

  • Habakkuk — Day 2: “How Long?”

    1 The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

    The Prophet Complains

    2 LORD, how long will I call for help and you not listen?
    I cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you don’t deliver us.

    Yesterday I read the book of Habakkuk. Today, I went back to slow down and study just the first two verses. Here are a few things that stood out to me.

    • I think sometimes, when things get hard, we assume it’s faith that gets lost. At first glance, that might look like what’s happening here. But when I look closer—when I read this with a magnifying glass instead of skimming the question as a whole—it tells a different story.
      • Habakkuk says, “How long…”
        And those two words actually signal the opposite of a lack of faith:
        • How long means he believes God can and will act.
        • It also means he has asked before, which signals endurance rather than abandonment.
        • He assumes God should hear and can save, and that the frustration exists only because he believes God is who He says He is.
          (See Psalm 13 and Psalm 22.)
    • This is a deeply vulnerable conversation with God. It separates “God, if you’re up there…” from “God, I know You’re there, and I don’t understand this.”
    • The word “violence” (ḥāmās in Hebrew) reflects social collapse, not isolated crime. This isn’t about one bad moment; it’s about a system full of moral collapse.

    Habakkuk is frustrated because he believes. That’s what separates his cry from unbelief. He can’t reconcile who he knows God to be with the fact that God is allowing this collapse.

    Habakkuk is waiting.
    Not patiently, but honestly.
    And he’s waiting for God in a raw, spiritual way.

  • Habakkuk 1: Day 1

    Why does God let his people fall sometimes?

    2025 was rough.
    Not in a dramatic way, but in the small ways no one sees. The kind where you drift further from where you want to be in inches instead of yards. Then one day you look up and wonder how you landed here. It’s never the big decisions that change where you end up. It’s the micro-movements; keeping your head down, watching your feet instead of looking forward, tracking the next step without making sure it actually leads where you want to go.

    Today, I started the Book of Habakkuk. I chose it because it’s different. You don’t hear it referenced often in church, and no one names their child Habakkuk, but it’s thought-provoking.

    In this book, Habakkuk asks God why He allows evil to exist. In this context, he’s referring to the Chaldeans—another name for the Babylonians.

    They are wreaking havoc in Judah, corrupting God’s people, and their siege is only rising. Habakkuk confronts God.

    He wants to know why God seems silent while injustice spreads—and why God would allow His own people to fall so far before intervening.

    If I’m being brutally honest, sometimes I ask God the same questions while looking in the mirror. I’m not evil, but sometimes I lose my character, or at least the person I strive to be. It will be interesting to see how God responds as I read further.

    If you’d like to slow down and look more closely at the text, you can read my reflections on verses 1–2 here.

  • When the Plant Died

    When the Plant Died

    By April 2024, my dad’s metastatic melanoma had spread almost everywhere—lungs, liver, pancreas, bones, neck, lymph nodes.

    His doctor didn’t offer hope.
    Just stabilization.
    He even said, “Let’s not talk about remission.”

    But my dad—he’s not like most people.
    He believed he was going to beat it.
    Even after his doctor told him he probably wouldn’t.

    I, on the other hand, believed every word. I read every PubMed article. Every single one said this was a poor prognosis.

    And for the first time in my life—I resigned.
    I quit my Bible study after 11 straight years.
    I stopped reading Scripture.

    I didn’t stop believing, exactly. I just stopped trusting that God was as kind as He claimed to be.

    If that offends you, that’s fine.
    Just promise me you’ve been honest about your own beliefs before you judge mine.
    Because people who’ve never doubted usually aren’t the ones asking the hard questions—
    and you don’t go looking for answers if you think you already have them.

    But here’s the part I wasn’t telling anyone:
    I didn’t have the emotional energy to fall apart.
    Not as a mom of four. Not as a wife trying to hold it all together.

    So I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just… shut down.

    One day in April, we were all outside—me, Robert, the kids. It was one of those rare, golden spring days that shows up like light through a dusty window: soft, sudden, and sacred.

    I had my headphones in, trying to follow my counselor’s advice: lean into the grief instead of numbing it.

    And that’s when I saw her—my welwitschia plant.

    She was gone.
    Brown, wilted, scorched.

    I’d paid $50 for her. Split her the year before. Watched both halves thrive.

    Curious what kind of plant I’m talking about? It’s called a Whalefin plant—officially known as Dracaena masoniana.
    You can read more about it on Wikipedia, or check out a visual example from Costa Farms.

    In January I noticed the fireplace had scorched her in some spots, so I cut off the parts that were dead, and left what I thought would survive and regrow. I had done this before and it worked.

    But in April, I realized, it did not work this time.

    And that was it. The last Jenga block.
    I walked over, grabbed her by the stem with my bare hand, yanked her from the pot, and threw her across the yard.

    I wasn’t just mad at God. I was done.
    “So you’re taking my dad and my plant too?”

    I know how ridiculous that sounds.
    But on days like that, everything feels like betrayal.

    But then, in the middle of my tantrum…
    I saw it.

    A baby shoot.
    Green.
    Alive.
    Growing quietly behind what I thought had died.

    I froze.
    Because I realized—God had been working beneath the soil this whole time.

    Even when it looked hopeless.
    Even when it looked dead.
    Even when I was yelling at the sky.

    That new shoot?
    It didn’t just appear that day.
    It had been growing in the dark for months—while I was doubting, quitting, giving up.

    And that’s when I surrendered.
    Not in shame. In awe.

    I obviously ran back in the yard to grab the dead plant so I could show Robert what I was hearing from God. It was a moment of reckoning.

    A month later, my dad’s next scan showed no evidence of disease.
    The doctor didn’t believe it.
    Said it was probably just “no new tumors.”

    But three months after that, a second scan confirmed: my dad was cancer free.

    The radiologist confirmed it with a call.

    Right around the time that baby shoot showed up in my garden,
    he was already healing.
    And I hadn’t even known.

    I’m not saying I have it all figured out.
    You don’t pull that far away from God without a long walk back.

    But here’s what I am claiming:

    • That God shows up even if you don’t.
    • That sometimes your eyes lie.
    • That faith is not always felt first—but it’s never wasted.

    They say “believe what you see and only half of what you hear.”

    But now?
    I believe none of what I hear, only half of what I see—
    and all of what I know about God’s mercies.