My Blogging Anniversary: Pondering Deep Water Faith

Today is the 6th anniversary of the day I started this blog. I decided to see what I had posted that day. I’d forgotten how excited I’d been to start blogging; I posted 4 articles in that one day!

I thought I’d share one of those posts today and how things have changed since I posted it. The title of that post was “Deep Water Faith in the Shallow End,” and it said this:

I posted this awhile back in my notes on Facebook, so if you’ve read my notes you’ve seen this. But I’m having so much fun with how easy it is to blog, I thought I’d post this here, too. I can’t believe how  easy this is.

“Deep water faith in the shallow end” is a line in a song by Casting Crowns called “Somewhere in the Middle.” I’ve been listening to that CD in my car lately, and this line has really stuck in my head. As I hear it, I realize it applies to me. I have deep water faith. I trust that God can do anything and that with Him so can I. I trust that His plans for me are far greater than I can imagine, and that I will never be alone or lost as long as I follow Him.

And yet, here I stand in the shallow end of life. I don’t act on that deep water faith very often (though when I do I am amazed at the results). I wonder why I don’t just plunge into the deep end and grab hold of what God has in store.

The line of the song before this one is “reckless abandon wrapped in common sense.” Maybe that’s it. I listen too much to the common sense the world has taught me. I hear about what can’t be done and I think it to be true. I need to remember and believe that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now that’s deep water faith.

So what’s changed since I wrote this? Well, God has literally taken me into deeper water than I ever thought I’d go when I went snorkeling in 2014, and when I snorkeled again in 2015 in even deeper waters. He did that by calling me to trust in Him, to have deep water faith. He used that literal deep water experience to teach me something about Himself and His faithfulness.

As a result, I have begun to venture into figurative deep water in other areas of my life, especially what I’ve been writing on my blog. I’ve written more about my story of suffering and pain, and how it led me to healing and redemption in Christ. God has given me the courage to share so much that I once felt I had to keep secret.

The results have been amazing blessings and a closer relationship with God. I’ll be posting about one such blessing of stepping out in faith and writing about my experience with abortion on Monday, but you’ll have to come back to see what it is.

But I still don’t think I’ve ventured into the truly deep water yet. I’m not in the shallow end anymore, but there’s still more I could write, that I know I need to write.

Last night I attended the Faith & Culture Writers Connection with guest speaker Romal Tune. One of the things he said resonated with me. He said that we are afraid to write what we fear we’ll be judged for, but that we have to remember that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). I realized that although there are certain things I’ve been willing to share, there are other things—I’ll call them the in between things—that I’ve wanted to leave out.

Then this morning I had an early morning dream—between being awakened by my husband’s alarm and finally having to get up for mine—in which I was going snorkeling, and someone I was with wanted to go out deeper. I refused, choosing to stay closer to shore in the reef area, because I was certain there were sharks in the deeper water.

And there probably are sharks in the deeper water of honesty and openness. There are those who will judge, but they don’t matter, because God has forgiven me by the blood of Christ. I will triumph “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of [my] testimony.” Revelation 12:11.

And so, I’m going to venture into the deep water over the next year. I may not jump off the boat mid-ocean, but little by little, as the Holy Spirit leads, I will go into the deep water God has called me to.