I’ve walked so many people through difficulties in their marriages, their relationships with their children and their relationships with their parents. I just want to acknowledge that some of you are hanging on by a thread.

Some of you have relationships and marriages that are so complicated, so difficult, where you’ve lost hope in many ways. And all of my how to fix your marriage relationship advice might seem like it’s not going to work for you and your situation in your marriage. Some of you may desperately want a relationship that is real and lasting and deep.

And for some reason, you haven’t been able to manifest that in your life. Maybe you’re single and you’re still looking, or maybe you’re married and you’re filled with disappointment. Maybe you even feel like you’ve done your own personal work, but things aren’t getting better for you.

Maybe you can see that you’re emotionally healthier than many women who have the relationship that you want and it feels so frustrating and unfair and you just don’t understand.

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense. And sometimes it isn’t fair. Can we just acknowledge that?

Acknowledging Relationship Struggles

If you find yourself in a difficult relationship, let’s just acknowledge, it is not easy.

I talk about the fact that you have options and you do, but honestly, sometimes all the options suck. There isn’t always an easy answer to solve your relationship problems, to make your relationship healthy or to get yourself out of a difficult relationship.

I’m not sitting here to try to make you feel bad. I’m just saying I get you and I know what you feel and I understand the conundrum that you’re in. It probably feels like you’re between a rock and a hard place.

I want to also remind you that you were put here for a time such as this. Sometimes when we’re in difficult places and relationships in our life, we can become so disappointed that it actually makes us begin to question our faith. And as we’re trying to make choices, sometimes it can make us question, do I need to throw out my faith in order to be happy? Whatever happy means. Few things will bruise our faith like disappointment will.

Maybe you thought the person you married was someone different. Maybe you’re disappointed in your marriage or your kids, or you’re disappointed in how your life turned out.

Resilient faith sees past disappointment. But What does that even mean, to look past disappointment?

Embracing Wobbly Faith in Uncertainty

When I think about that, I think about standing on a mountain with this valley of darkness below you. You have to look past that over the horizon. That is what resilient faith does. But today we’re going to talk about wobbly faith because sometimes wobbly faith is the only faith we can have- a faith that says, I don’t know, God- I just don’t know.

But I will tell you that resilient faith dares to believe that God is good even if the outcome is bad because faith does not hinge on the goodness of the outcome, but on the goodness of God.

But what about wobbly faith? You know how very tiny a mustard seed is. And we know what God says about us having the faith of even the size of a mustard seed. That faith matters, even if it’s wobbly faith.

In the context of your relationship, maybe you’ve given up hope. What I’m not asking you to have is hope that your marriage will be restored, that your relationships will be restored. I’m asking you to have faith and hope that you will be okay, that despite whatever happens in your relationship, that you know that God’s got you.

The reality is that you don’t need to trust the other person. You can give of yourself and you can be open because all you need to do is trust yourself. Trust yourself that you’re going to be able to tolerate anything that happens if that person doesn’t respond in the way that you wish, if they don’t show up for you in the way that you wish they would. You can trust yourself and that gives you some freedom.

And so I’m asking you to put your wobbly faith, not in your relationship, not in your partner and their response and whether he’s going to give you what you need, but take your wobbly faith and put it in God. Put it in yourself, knowing that you already have the tools to deal with whatever might come forward in your relationship. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my life circumstances, but I do have wobbly faith. It’s not the strongest faith every single day, but I do have a wobbly faith that I know it’s going to work out.

Confronting Fears and Taking Courageous Steps

When it comes to wobbly faith, sometimes we have to redefine what good outcomes are.

Does a good outcome mean everything is restored with your relationship? Does it mean that you no longer have any issues and life is smooth sailing from here on out? The reality is that especially on social media, we’re a generation of good outcomes that hide a multitude of shame. So wobbly faith recognizes that fear is there. Wobbly faith doesn’t try to ignore fear.

It recognizes that that fear is there, yet wobbly faith acts in courage and dares to take just the next right little step in the direction of where you want to go. Wobbly faith looks out over that horizon and says, I know I need to get there. Let me just think of the next small tiny step that will lead me there.

Are you accepting the status quo in your relationship because you’re worried about what others will think if you challenge it? Are you worried about what your partner will think when you challenge something that’s always been normal for you guys?

Are you accepting the status quo in your relationship because you’re fearful of the loss of comfort and security? Maybe you don’t want to disrupt that surface peace in your relationship, although you’ve got a river of dysfunction underneath it. Sometimes we stay frozen because we can’t see the end line.

We may know deeply right now, something’s not okay. I need to confront this. I need to stand up for myself, but we can’t see what the end looks like.

And so we stay frozen. I encourage you, as someone who may have wobbly faith, to take the next right step, even though you can’t see the end. You can see what’s right in front of you.

You don’t always have to have full clarity of purpose in order to take the next right step towards the direction that you want to go- the direction towards health.

I’m asking you very nicely to stop overthinking the future. I know you’ve heard people say this a million times, but it’s true that the future does take care of itself. If you are consistently doing the next right small step, you are taking care of the future.

You do what’s right in the moment and you let tomorrow take care of itself.

Finding Strength in Vulnerability

I don’t believe that God calls us to suffer in difficult relationships. There is no good calling regarding that.

So my question for you is what’s keeping you from living out your wobbly faith? Is it fear? Is it anger? Is it uncertainty? I truly believe that wobbly faith, whatever little tiny mustard seed you can garner in that day, changes everything. You have resilience that is deeper than you could have ever imagined.

And so today, I just invite you, I encourage you, I implore you, and I hope I’m inspiring you a little bit to just practice a little wobbly faith in your situation. Your situation is here for a reason and you don’t understand why it is and that’s okay.

It doesn’t mean that you have to stay stuck though, so please do not allow that to be a crutch to say. Let’s not say, well, I’m just supposed to be here for some reason and I’m just going to do nothing. No, please don’t do nothing. Take action.

Take the next right little step towards health in your life and health in your relationship. Even though it’s scary, use that little wobbly faith to just take the next right step.

You’ve got this.