Ten years ago, at the ripe old age of 19, I experienced a crisis of faith. The God I thought I knew turned out to be a fake. One plus one did not equal two. I was angry, disillusioned, full of doubt.

Damn you, God I said out loud.

For the first time, I, the good little Christian homeschooley girl, considered chucking God out the window. What if it wasn't real? It certainly didn't seem real. The promises didn't add up. What I'd been told...didn't add up.

It was during my time of faith-less-ness that I discovered what true faith is.

It was when my faith was destroyed that I first experienced true faith in God.

It was when I wondered if God was a "cosmic sadist" as C.S. Lewis pointed out - or wondered whether he existed at all - that I met him for the first time.

But I didn't find God in the Bible. I didn't find God in the church. In fact, I didn't find God period.

God found me.

I'd studied apologetics. I could hold my own in a debate about the existence of God with any atheist. But it took both the pain that caused me to question my beliefs and a real, living encounter with the living Christ for me to find something other than head knowledge.

Some stuff has been going on recently in my personal life, stuff I can't blog about. Stuff that has made me ask,

do I really believe in God?

Do I believe that God is active in this world - that he is more than a story in a book?
Do I believe that God cares more for my loved ones than I do?
Do I believe that God is powerful to act and to pursue relationship with his children?
Do I believe that God will come for me, for us, for all of us - again and again, in our time of deepest need?

I am confronted once again with my lack of faith-less-ness.

And in it, I find the true meaning of faith.

C.S. Lewis, in his memoir A Grief Observed, describes that merely "saying" you have faith is not enough. He likened it to saying you believe a rope could hold your weight - saying that it's not until you are hanging by that rope over a precipice that you have faith.

It is when the rubber meets the road, when we must answer the question am I living in such a way that I need God to show up, or am I living as a practical atheist - as if he won't?

I believe most Christians are practical atheists. We'd like God to intervene, we'd like him to show up, but we've stopped believing he will. So we think it's up to us to take care of whatever it is that needs taking care of. We live without truly letting ourselves feel the depth of our need for him.

Because to need him to show up takes faith. Faith that he's more than a religion, more than a pie in the sky, more than a promise of eternal life. Faith that he's a person who loves us.

It's easier to quote the Westminster Confession than to actually believe in God.

I am a person with a lot of doubts. On a good day, I figure the likelihood that God exists is about 70/30. I think the last time I ever felt 100% certain was before that day ten years ago when I told God to piss off. But that certainty wasn't faith. It was the naive dogma of an ignorant child who'd never experienced pain.

My faith doesn't come with certainty. I guess that's what makes it faith. But during times like these, when I'm faced again with the questions and the pain that life brings, I remember the words I left unsaid during that dark night of the soul - if there is a God, he will come for me.

He did. And he will again.