The Power of Faith

A little while ago, when I was worried that my hernia was actually a tumour- oh, the paranoia!-, I was going to post about faith, and belonging to a church. I am not saying that the two necessarily go hand in hand, I am sure that there are lots of people with a whole lot of faith that never set foot in a church and I know for a fact that there are weekly churchgoers who certainly show very little faith.

It is something I have thought about often, but not done anything about. When my friend's husband was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2000 they had quite a bit of support from their church for the two months before his death. Meals prepared, prayers, babysitting....it was a good thing. I am not sure where they were after his death though.

I thought that having such a support system would be great. This was around the time that my then husband was becoming quite ill, and I wished we properly "belonged" to my church, rather than just being registered members who hardly ever attended. But I never felt comfortable with that church family, and would have felt hypocritical going only because of possible what ifs.

For me, becoming comfortable with a church would literally mean giving up my religion, as my beliefs to do not fall in line with the Catholic church at all. I know that I would fit in better with a liberal Protestant church, but I am currently struggling with the word 'Protestant'. I am just not ready to say that I am not a Catholic, no matter how lapsed I may be.

And while I may not believe that I am actually eating the body of Christ during communion, I certainly believe in God. It wasn't until Taylor was born that I realized how much I believed that we need to have faith in something. Taylor's father was against her being baptized in any faith and for 6 months I insisted that she be baptized. My reasoning was that should she need something to believe in, it is there for her. Don't ask me how I managed to win that battle with that line as my argument. But I did, and she was baptized at 8 months. I have not yet won it for Sophie though.

The reason I am bringing this up now is because yesterday I was reading Wendy's blog and she linked to this site.

I was hooked. This is the blog of Nate, whose wife Tricia has Cystic Fibrosis. While waiting for a double lung transplant, they discovered they were expecting. Their daughter Gwyneth was born at 25 weeks on January 8. Tricia is now on a ventilator.

The faith of this man, and his family, absolutely overwhelms me. I am beyond words. To me, this story is the proof of the power of faith. I do believe that God is providing him with the strength to get through this every single day, whereas I can almost guarantee that my family would fall apart at the seams. I am not saying that I do not believe in God, or have no faith. I just have not taken the time to explore my faith. I believe, I just do not believe enough. And that makes me sad.

Nate's faith, his family's faith, their friends, their church, and the prayers of hundreds of blog readers, will get his family through this difficult time. And that is amazing. Absolutely astounding.