 I wore a sweatshirt yesterday that I hadn’t touched in over two years… and I almost yanked it off.
Why? Because I was afraid of it. I know that sounds dramatic, maybe even a little irrational—but it’s true. It was the sweatshirt I wore to the ER when my nervous system had become so wrecked that my body stopped sleeping. In October of 2024, I went through months without real rest. Even when my body collapsed into sleep, I would wake up panicking. My entire world felt upside down, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t steady it. I was stuck in fight or flight. Constantly sweating or shivering. Unable to sit still. Unable to eat. Everything felt out of my control—and it was terrifying. After another sleepless night and realizing I couldn’t even sit through my daughter’s piano recital, I hit a breaking point. I needed help. So I went to the ER. But what unsettled me most wasn’t just the exhaustion—it was the not knowing. I like to feel at least somewhat in control. And if my body was a car, it felt like someone else had taken the wheel. I didn’t know where I was headed. Desperate, I kept asking: What’s happening to me? Am I going to be okay? And here’s the hard part… The doctors didn’t have immediate answers. They only had next steps. I wanted relief. I wanted certainty. But instead, I was invited into something I didn’t want at all…
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Faith That Survives Grief: Surrender When Life Is Out Of Control | Guest Post By Hope Dover3/18/2026  I’ll never forget the look on the doctor’s face or how the air was sucked out of the room. For a moment, it felt like I forgot how to breathe. It was the moment my life changed forever, the moment that defined the me before and the me after grief entered my story.
Life-changing moments often happen quickly when we least expect them. Mine happened in a small exam room at the Maternal Fetal Medicine office when my husband and I were blindsided with three little words - “It’s not good.” As the doctor kept talking, we learned about all the fatal fetal anomalies that would prevent our first child from living outside my womb. That moment brought more questions than answers and many desperate prayers that didn’t get answered the way I wanted. As believers, it’s easy to fall into the mindset that if we pray hard enough, we can prevent heartbreak. Unfortunately, the outcome we pray for is not always the outcome God has planned. So what happens to our faith when grief enters our story and prayer doesn’t change the outcome?  God sits on a throne, not a loveseat.
It’s important that we remember that as we wrestle with who He truly is. Because He’s not fragile. He doesn’t see our questions and doubts and run away scared. He can handle the full weight of it all. Here’s how I know… Gage and I were sitting on the couch last night asking each other questions from a couples card game we bought each other for Christmas. One card asked: “What were the key turning points in your life that brought you to where you are today?” As I started reflecting on my faith — on Jesus as the promised Messiah, the fulfillment of prophecy, and the reality of the Holy Spirit truly residing in my heart — I realized something surprising. The turning point for my faith wasn’t baptism. It wasn’t a radical encounter with God at church camp. The turning point for my faith was doubt. In high school, I started wondering: Is this all real? I was struggling with depression and an eating disorder. I was picked on and often felt left out. And in the middle of all that pain, I found myself asking: God, if you’re really there… then why? Always the intellectual, I didn’t just have personal doubts. I had theological ones too.
My list of questions went on and on. And I didn’t keep them quiet. I threw every question I had at God, my youth pastor, and my dad. I read books about other religions and studied everything I could. And here’s what happened…  March is finally here and, in South Carolina, that means we start to feel the shifting of seasons.
It’s not spring yet… but almost. Winter isn’t over yet… but almost. March is a month of transition — where the weather flips up and down, flowers begin to emerge but remain tight in their buds, and the world slowly wakes up from winter’s rest without fully coming alive. Many of us know this transition space well. We’re living in a March of the soul. We’ve prayed the prayers but haven’t received an answer. We’ve submitted the job application but are still waiting for a response. We’ve received a diagnosis and are awaiting treatment and healing to begin. We’ve been mothering in quiet, unseen places, longing for even a small acknowledgment. Like seeds ready to sprout from soon-to-be spring soil, we are waiting — hidden and hopeful for the season to come. But we’re stuck between the now and the not-yet. For a short year of our lives, we lived in Colorado. Winter there stretched on endlessly. Looking out over the snow-covered ground, it seemed logical to believe the land was barren. What could possibly grow under all that snow after months of freezing temperatures? Turns out… a lot. All it took was one short month for that snow to give way to some of the most lush late-spring forests and gardens I had ever seen. In the in-betweens of life, it’s easy to make the same assumption about God because everything feels barren. Is He even there? Does God answer prayers? Is He punishing me? Why does God feel silent? |
