None of us are immune to struggle in our walk with God. As believers, our faith will be shaken. Jesus was direct about it. He did not soften it or promise us otherwise.
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
He told us plainly, and still, sometimes, the “trouble” lands heavier than others. Recent months have, and especially this last week has, been one of those times for me. I want to share this openly, because I think we do each other a disservice when we only show the anchored version of ourselves and hide the shaking. Our testimony, especially when it gets gritty, is our greatest gift and tool as believers — especially when times are tough — and I do not believe in discounting or hiding that.
So let me tell you about my week. My month, really…
It actually started almost a year ago.
After much prayer, waiting, and careful discernment, God moved my husband out of a job situation that had become both physically and spiritually dangerous. We did not make that decision lightly. We sat with it, we prayed diligently and sought God in it, and trusted what we believed He was showing us.
About six months after we surrendered the situation in full to Him, our whole family praying and waiting on Him, He placed my husband, in His timing, at a new position — one that felt like a genuine answer to prayer. We suddenly had every need met. Insurance, pay more than doubled, steady shifts with overtime, not to mention the spiritual aspect of no longer being surrounded by evil at work. Every. Single. Need.
Eight months in, just a month ago, without warning and without real explanation, the company he had been placed with shut down his plant. Three hundred people, suddenly unemployed. The severance package? Three weeks of pay, three weeks of insurance, and, “good luck.” Some of the administration, themselves caught off guard, did everything they could — job counseling, mental health resources, a job fair. They were decent people doing their best in an indecent situation. But there are not 300 jobs available in our area. Not even close.
The avenue that opened most immediately was an offer from his previous employer. Yes, the one we believed God had delivered us from. The one with which the history was not good. The one that represented, to me, the very environment God had just spent months growing us out of and building us up from. The offer came with full insurance and a slight pay increase over what he had been making when he left, and a near begging tone — but still far below what he had been earning at the job now lost. He seemed to briefly question it, yet also immediately find it acceptable.
There have still been no real conversations between us about the spiritual weight of that door, at least not ones that haven’t ended in arguing rather than discussion, about whether it was God opening it or something else entirely, about what our discernment was actually telling us. Just a quiet settling, at this point for both of us if I’m being honest (although I do not fully find it acceptable from a personal, and spiritual, level): this covers the insurance, we’ll figure out the rest.
That left me feeling, in ways I am still sitting with, betrayed — by the situation, by the lack of shared discernment, even by my own self, and if I am being fully honest, by God Himself in that moment. No final decisions or permanent moves have been made. We are still in limbo, and I am still, underneath the fear, operating from the place that knows God is not confused about any of this even when I am. But the shaking is real, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
About a month before the news about his job broke, my body had already begun sounding its own alarms.
I started having serious, frightening issues with my heart. Not anxiety. Not stress manifesting physically — though God knows there was enough of that. My heart was not functioning the way it should, which was dangerous given preexisting conditions I have carried since birth and that were made significantly worse during pregnancy and childbirth fifteen years ago. Two weeks before we got the news about the plant shutting down, things had escalated enough that my husband missed work to take me to the emergency room.
A week after that ER visit, I was able to see my doctors. What they confirmed was this: four months earlier, a nurse practitioner at my gynecologist’s office had convinced me to switch from oral estrogen to a patch. It was a reasonable suggestion, and I had agreed. What none of us anticipated was how long it would take my body to establish a baseline with the new medication — three months — and that once it did, everything would go sideways. For someone with my cardiac history, that was not just uncomfortable. It was dangerous.
Getting the medication changed back was not as simple as it should have been. I had to advocate firmly for myself, leaning on what I and my cardiologist already knew about my body, before the switch was made. Once it was made, we discovered that my insurance no longer covers the original medication. We are now paying for it out of pocket. Things have slowly begun to stabilize, but further cardiac testing is still ahead in the coming weeks, and I am not through it yet.
In the middle of all of this I broke a tooth, which sent me to the dentist — my single greatest fear in this life. That visit revealed that before anything else could be addressed, all four of my wisdom teeth, including the broken one that had started this dental fiasco, had to be fully removed. Getting surgical clearance from my cardiologist given everything already in motion was its own ordeal. But it was arranged, approved, and scheduled.
This brings us to this past week.
A few days before the oral surgery I was already dreading, I made the mistake of being helpful on the internet. Someone mentioned they were thinking about painting the brick on their house. I stepped in gently to share something useful: brick is porous, it breathes, painting it traps moisture and causes damage that is expensive and very hard to undo. I suggested they do diligent research before committing to the idea fully. I offered my advice, which came from previous experience, with care.
A man (not even the person I was commenting to in the first place, mind you) came in swinging.
“Shut the f** up. You people are so miserable.”
I responded with facts instead of fire. I offered masonry specifics and breathable alternatives. He escalated to slurs. Explicit, degrading, abusive ones. Why? Because I tried to help a stranger protect their home.
He blocked me before I could report the comment that had called me everything from a “miserable b****” to an “ignorant and retarded c***.” Still, I reported him. I blocked him, too. That final abusive reply I never got to screenshot. His profile and his comments remain, despite his track record (he attacks EVERYONE in this way, yet his entire profile boasts his Christian faith and belief in Christ-like living). Hypocrisy at its finest.
A small moment in the grand scheme of things. But it was not isolated. It was one example among many that has felt increasingly dark lately. Apostasy. Moral failure dressed up as freedom. People who preach compassion with one voice and use the next to tear someone apart. Arrogance performing as wisdom. A coldness in the culture that is hard to look at directly for too long.
The reality of all realities is that God warned us this was coming, and that it would be much more blatant the closer we come to the end of times.
But mark this: there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good — having a form of godliness but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. (Matthew 24:12)
We were told. Scripture is not silent on this. The falling away, the coldness, the brutality wearing a friendly face — it was named for us long before we arrived here. This is not a surprise to God.
But being warned does not mean it does not cost you something to witness it. Being theologically prepared for apostasy does not make you immune to the grief of watching it happen in real time. Sometimes in people you once trusted. Sometimes in spaces that were supposed to be safe.
Then, two days later, came the surgery.
I was already frightened. They knew that. It had been part of every conversation from the very first appointment. And still, when I was brought to the room where the procedure would take place, I found myself in what equated to a basement, a room with bare white walls, a clock, and a chair. Nothing else.
No one spoke to me as they prepped me and put on the blood pressure cuff, attached electrodes to my torso, or reviewed my chart. No explanations or information on what they were doing. No reassurance. No “you’re doing okay.” Just the sound of instruments being gathered somewhere out of my sight and the steady ticking of that clock, as they left me alone for the half hour before my surgery began.
I sat in that cold, colorless chair, literally shaking more from fear than the freezing temperature in the room, even after two nurses and the doctor reappeared. They said nothing. They all hovered over me with their masks and placed their lighting, inserted the IV with no warning, and began before I was even fully sedated. All this, in complete silence. They weren’t even speaking to each other. I have never felt more like I was not having a procedure, but was a procedure — a meaningless one, at that — in my life.
They walked me to our truck before I was fully awake, unable to even stand from the chair on my own, not fully aware of where I was. I was so confused. My legs did not feel like mine. The world was tilted at an angle that had nothing to do with the building or the parking lot. Someone’s hand was briefly, perfunctorily, on my arm, more a gesture toward the exit than any real support. No wheelchair. No steady voice telling me to take my time. Just the sudden shock of daylight after that cold, colorless room, and the ordinary noise of the outside world rushing in while my body was still half somewhere else.
I saw my husband’s face when I reached him. His jaw was set in the way it gets when he is angry but holding it. They handed him a printed card of instructions without a word of explanation and turned to go back inside. I was hollowed out, still under the influence of heavy anesthesia, unable to fully process where I was, and yet somewhere underneath the fog, the thing that registered most clearly was this: they knew I was scared. From the very first appointment, they knew, and it had not seemed to matter even once.
This is a different kind of shaking. Not the noise of social media. Not the culture war. Just the quiet ache of being completely vulnerable in an everyday and very real life, possibly dangerous situation, being seen in that vulnerability, and being looked past anyway. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder, in your most human moments, whether anyone is truly paying attention; whether anyone cares about anything besides themselves and their paycheck.
And then, out of nowhere, still under the fog of anesthesia, I remembered:
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. (Psalm 46:1-2)
He was in that room, even when all I could do was shake and all I could hear was the clock. He was with me as I stumbled, of my own fragile, remaining ability and not the help of anyone else, to the truck. He was there on the drive home, comforting me with that verse, which I somehow remembered and was focused on despite the daze the anesthesia kept me in. That wasn’t me. That was the Holy Spirit. That was God.
Recovery from surgery has been, all things considered, more miracle than disaster. I am allergic to antibiotics (truly, every one known to man, usually having to resort to synthetics and in-hospital observance throughout treatment) but have had zero side effects from the Z-pack I was prescribed during post surgery recovery, and I had only a mild cardiac blip/reaction to the anesthesia — of course it was heart-related, as nearly everything has been lately — which meant being alone in the first couple of days post-surgery was not advisable. By God’s grace, my husband was already in the middle of a seven-day stretch off from work. He was home. He was present. He took care of me. And for that I am not simply thankful but wholly grateful to God, because the timing of it was not coincidence.
The first few days have gone about as well as they could have, which felt like its own small mercy. But as my body begins to stabilize and the fog begins to lift, the other reality we had been living has been sneaking back to the surface. The previous employer who had reached out the morning after the plant shutdown — “I heard what happened, so sorry, let’s talk” — had since grown into a full offer and a growing pressure. Full family insurance, as mentioned previously. A slight increase over what he had been making when he left that job, but still potentially half of what the last eight months have been paying. And as the days have passed with no word yet from the company he was genuinely hoping to hear from, I have watched him settle further into “this is where God is putting me.”
I have settled further into something else entirely. Not peace. Not acceptance. A deepening and honest doubt about whether this particular door is God’s hand or the enemy’s counterfeit. I find myself deeply questioning God, even arguing with Him. I keep returning to Job — not the ending, but the middle. The place where everything God had built was suddenly and inexplicably under assault, not because Job had failed but because he was being tested. Because he was worth testing. I do not say that to be dramatic. I say it because it is where I am, and pretending otherwise would make this post a lie.
In the last 24-ish hours, day three to four of recovery and still being advised, because of my heart, to take it easier than most, has also come the recovery scrolling… which, if I am honest, I knew better than. But here I’ve been — in bed, still sore, still tender in more ways than one — ignoring what has felt like God purposely keeping me in solitude and instead diverting from reading Scripture and praying to opening X and following threads, albeit from people I trust.
I’ve scrolled the voices of discernment I’ve always found fruitful, and the independent journalists who have always been on point in tracking what is happening at the intersection of faith and power and politics. There’s been the growing fracture between the pope and the president. Religious voices dissenting, defending, choosing sides, many of them apparently unable to distinguish between the Pope and God Himself. And underneath all of it, more of the same spirit I had encountered from the man who came for me over brick facts. Different subject, different targets. Same darkness.
It is disheartening. That is the honest word for it.
And yet, in the middle of all of it — the confusion, the scrolling, the doubt, the physical pain — I keep sensing the same quiet directive. Not to have it resolved. Not to perform peace I do not yet feel. Just this: stay focused on Me. Keep your eyes here. Even in your confusion. Especially in your confusion.
That is not something I am producing in myself. That is something being produced in me by a Source that is not me, and it is the only reason I am writing this post at all, rather than disappearing into the noise…
…because the hardest shaking does not come from strangers on the internet or cold surgical rooms. Scripture is clear about where the real battle is waged.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
As I consider these verses, I am reminded that the enemy does not waste his effort on things that do not matter. He goes for the places where we are most alive, most invested, most exposed. Our marriages. Our homes. Our health. The very places God has been most at work. If you have been feeling it there lately, in the closest and most tender parts of your life, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone.
Here is what I want you to hear, if you are reading this in your own shaking:
None of us are immune. Not the deeply faithful. Not the long-term followers. Not the ones who have walked through fire before and came out still holding the Word. We are human beings living inside a broken world, and we feel it. We feel the coldness of it. We feel the weight of watching people choose cruelty over kindness, performance over truth, self over everything else. We feel the confusion when the people and places closest to us become the battleground.
That is not a failure of faith. It is the experience of being alive, paying attention, and caring about what God cares about.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. (Isaiah 43:2)
He did not say you would not pass through the waters. He said He would be there when you did.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)
That is not comfortable language, but it is honest language, and honest is what this moment calls for.
There is one more passage I keep returning to this week:
At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ The words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken — that is, created things — so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. (Hebrews 12:26-28)
The shaking is not the enemy winning. The shaking is often simply the process of removal. Sometimes, it is the process of returning to what has or can now be healed, because of our growth and new strength. Sometimes God has been preparing us for that moment, even though it may feel confusing when the moment arrives. Everything that was never truly solid being, or having been, stripped away, so that what is unshakeable can finally be seen clearly. The rock beneath the trembling. The One who was never moved, even when everything around Him was.
My faith in people, and in some moments even my faith in God, even though I had thought just moments before it was at the strongest it has ever been, has taken real hits this month. My faith in the warmth of strangers, in institutions, in the assumption that people who know you are scared will act accordingly — some of that has cracked. My faith in my own ability to hold it together without argument, without doubt, without moments of feeling utterly abandoned — cracked too.
But, when I get quiet enough, past the noise and the cold room and the slurs and the confusion about what God is doing in the closest parts of my life right now, what I find underneath is still Him. Unchanged. Not rattled. Not confused about my situation even when I am. That is the anchor. Not a feeling. Not circumstances making sense. Not people finally behaving the way they should.
Him.
If your faith is shaking today, you are in good company. You are not failing. You are feeling, and you are human, and you are living in exactly the world God told you that you would live in. You are not sinful or faithless in questioning God. Questioning God means you are using your faith, not losing it.
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)
The shaking is not the end of the story. What cannot be shaken is still standing. And so are you.
That’s it. That’s the end of this post, a sort of personal catch-up on both my life and my faith. It is a change of pace in what I generally share, and a boldly vunerable move for me to share a post like this, but a type of post I’ve been feeling led to write more of here at Twin Tree.
I want to close this post with a prayer, not just for me but for anyone who may be reading this post and/or resonating with it. A prayer for the shaking, if you will.
Lord, we come to You in the middle of it — not at the end, not once things make sense again, but right here, in the trembling.
We bring You the confusion we cannot resolve, the grief we did not expect, the moments we questioned You and the moments we were too tired to speak at all. We bring You the cold rooms and the unanswered prayers and the people who disappointed us and the version of ourselves we are not proud of this week.
You said to be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let our requests be made known to You — and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds. So we are doing that now. We are asking.
Guard us. Steady us. Embolden us with strength through the Holy Spirit who lives in us, with Your gifts of discernment and temperance. Remind us who You are when we forget.
You knew us before any of this began. You are not surprised by where we are. And You are already in what is coming.
We trust You with the shaking.
Amen.
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