The Light in a Dark Tunnel
My Wavering Faith
J.R.R. Tolkien once said, “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” Faith is knowing that life will get hard and knowing that it will get better. It’s knowing that good will always come no matter how minuscule or massive the situation is. The best way to describe faith is walking in a dark tunnel with no light but knowing that there is a light at the end regardless of how hard the journey is.
My faith in God has constantly wavered throughout my life and I’ve tried plenty of times to strengthened it but to no avail. I pray and read the bible but like “ Laura” from Blue Like Jazz, written by Donald Miller, “He needs to happen to me”(53). When I was a kid, my faith didn’t matter as much because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know how to pray. All I cared about was playing video games and playing with toys. I didn’t pay attention in the church because to a kid, preaching just sounds like yelling and who likes to be yelled at? But as I grew older and my mind matured I started to understand the role God played in my family’s past. That’s when my faith started to develop but I didn’t KNOW God, I just knew of Him.
I started to pray when I started to cuss which was in middle school. I thought cursing was a huge sin but it felt so good to do. Every night after a full day of cursing at school, I would pray and ask for forgiveness for the sin that I had committed. During this time period in my life, I would use God as a “slot machine” as Donald Miller describes in Blue Like Jazz(6). I would always need Him when something went wrong in life and I would.
But as I grew older into a high schooler, I started to credit Him for the good in my life and would ask him to help me through tough times. But then came senior year. At that time, I hadn’t been recruited or even looked at for that matter and I was worried that I would have to give up on my dream of playing college baseball. I would pray and pray to hope that God would influence a coach to take a chance on me. And at one point during my recruitment journey, I lost all hope and faith in everything including God. I felt betrayed because even though I wasn’t the most religious individual, I tried my best to walk with faith in everything I did, so it felt like a slap in the face when I was sitting in the fall semester of my senior year in high school with no college offers. I felt like He didn’t care about me. And I felt anger towards Him for not blessing me with college offers. I recall having a conversation with my mother about potentially going to school without playing baseball.
“ What colleges were you thinking of attending if baseball doesn’t work out?”
“ Uhhh I don’t know. I have given it much thought. I thought baseball was always the plan,” I questioned.
“ I know and it was for a while but we haven’t heard anything at all and time is running out. I’m sorry son, but not everyone gets to achieve their dreams.”
This angered me to which I sarcastically asked, “ Why don’t we ask our great God huh? He is so powerful yet he can’t grant my simple wish of being offered. He’s given players less deserving the opportunity to play, so why not me?”
She stood in shock. “Ajari,” she said with the coldest stare on her face, “ Never question our Lord ever again.”
I stood there fuming. I regained my composure and replied, “It just seems like He’s overlooking me like these coaches.”
She replied with one word. “Faith.
Soren Kierkegaard once said, “ The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” I related heavily to this quote because, after that encounter, I prayed but not to ask for Him to grant me my wish but to give me the strength in my body to work until I granted my own wish. I realized that for the blessing to come, I had to earn it and not just wish for it. And after that day, I proceeded to gain lots of attention on social media which brought college coaches. And after a long journey, I committed. It was the greatest day of my life because not only did I secure my future, I made my parents proud.
That word one, “Faith” can change a person’s life. The Bible says, “ For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). I believe that the hardest challenges in life test how strong a person’s faith is. It doesn’t have to be a religion per se, but faith is knowing that the hard times don’t last long. It’s knowing that there is good that comes from the bad. It’s knowing that at the end of the dark tunnel, there is a light waiting for you.
