What I Hold Onto

People ask me sometimes how I do it. Not in a casual way, but in that quiet, searching way people ask when they are trying to understand something that doesn’t quite make sense. They see the road I’ve walked, the weight I carry, the things I continue to face, and eventually the question comes: how do you keep going? And often it is followed by another question, one that feels even heavier: why haven’t your prayers been answered? I understand why they ask, because I have stood in those same questions myself. I have lived in moments where I prayed with everything in me, hoping for change, for healing, for clarity, and yet nothing seemed to shift the way I thought it would. Those are not easy places to stand, and they stretch something deep within you.

But my response has become simple, even if the journey to that simplicity has not been. My faith has walked with me my entire life. It has not been something I reached for only when things fell apart or something I leaned on only when I had no other option. It has been steady, growing with me through every season, through every high and every valley. And when the roads have been rough, and there have been many of them, more than I ever expected to walk, it has been what I’ve held onto when everything else felt uncertain.

Life does not always unfold the way we hope it will. There are seasons when prayers seem to echo into silence, when the answers we long for don’t come in the timing or the form we expected. There are moments when you find yourself still waiting, still hoping, still wondering why things haven’t changed. It would be easy in those moments to believe that unanswered prayers mean forgotten prayers, or that silence means absence. But I have learned something different through the years. Silence is not the same as absence. Just because I cannot see the answer does not mean something isn’t happening.

There have been many times in my life where I didn’t understand what God was doing, where I couldn’t see the purpose, where I felt like I was standing in the middle of something that made no sense at all. But when I look back, I can see that I was never alone in those moments. I can see that I was being carried in ways I didn’t recognize at the time. I can see that strength was being built in me, that something deeper was forming, even when everything on the surface felt uncertain.

Walking this journey with Tim, especially through PNES, depression, and anxiety, has deepened that understanding in ways I cannot fully explain. Loving someone through something you cannot fix changes you. It brings you face to face with your own limitations, with your own inability to control outcomes, and it forces you to decide what you truly believe when things don’t go the way you prayed they would. There have been moments where I have begged for things to be different, where I have wished for answers that didn’t come, where I have felt the weight of it all press down harder than I thought I could carry. But even in those moments, my faith has not left me.

It has not removed the difficulty, but it has given me something to stand on in the middle of it. It has reminded me that even when I don’t understand, I am still held. It has shown me that strength doesn’t always come from things getting easier, but from something deeper being built within me. It has taught me that trust is not about having all the answers, but about believing that I am not walking this road alone.

There is a peace that comes from that kind of faith, but it is not the kind of peace people often expect. It is not a peace that means everything is perfect or resolved. It is a quiet, steady peace that anchors you even when everything around you feels uncertain. It is the kind of peace that allows you to keep showing up, to keep loving, to keep moving forward, even when the path is hard and the outcome is unknown. It is the kind of peace that reminds you that your story is not defined by the struggles you face, but by the strength that carries you through them.

I think sometimes people believe faith is about getting what you ask for, about prayers being answered in clear and immediate ways. But for me, faith has become something much deeper than that. It has been about having something to hold onto when life doesn’t give me what I hoped for. It has been the anchor that keeps me steady when the waves feel too strong. It has been the quiet voice that reminds me to keep going when I feel exhausted. It has been the constant presence that walks beside me, even in moments when I feel like I am carrying more than I can handle.

And maybe that is what others need to hear. That it is okay to have questions, to wrestle with what you don’t understand, to feel the weight of unanswered prayers. None of those things mean your faith is weak. In fact, they are often what deepen it. Real faith is not built in the absence of struggle, but in the middle of it. It is built in the moments where you choose to keep trusting even when you cannot see the outcome. It is built in the decision to keep believing that there is still purpose in what you are walking through. It is built in the quiet resolve to hold onto something greater than what you can see.

So when people ask me how I do it, I don’t have a complicated answer. I tell them that my faith has walked with me my entire life, and when the road has been rough, it has been what I’ve held onto. And somehow, even in the middle of everything, that has been enough. Not because everything has been fixed or answered, but because I have never had to walk through it alone.