Let Your Faith be Bigger than Your...

One of my favorite quotes over the past number of years has been “Let Your Faith be Bigger than Your Fear.” If any of you know my personal story and God’s healing in my life related to struggles with mental health, clinical anxiety, and depression, you know how much this quote resonates with me. I even have part of the quote on my medical alert that I wear on my wrist at all times. One of my very first friends from when I was serving with Mercy Ships in 2008 actually made a sign for my husband and me that says that quote. She gave it to us as a wedding gift in 2018. May I interject here, that some of the best ships are friendships! A favorite quote of any Mercy Shipper. I am still very good friends with people I met on the ship 17 years ago! Also, how am I old enough to say that? My friend made the sign from old barn wood, painted it, and applied vinyl letters to the sign. It hangs in our bedroom in the USA. 

When we were preparing to head to the ship, I was thinking of ways I could decorate our cabin, to make it feel like “home.” I wanted items that didn’t weigh too much to pack in a suitcase or take up too much treasured suitcase space. I asked a friend to help me make vinyl lettering of the quote. I knew I could stick the vinyl to the ship walls without causing damage and have an easy decoration. In the hurry and scurry in the days leading up to us leaving the USA for Africa, I did not get a chance to look at the vinyl lettering my friend completed. 

I was excited to put the vinyl on the wall in our cabin, but thankful and blessed that we have a window in our cabin! Note, for my entire first 8 months on the ship in 2008, I did not have a window. Those cabins hold fond memories for me and were excellent for night shift sleeping, no light at all. We even joked that our cabins were in the “womb.” Deck three is located near the water level and close to the ship’s Ballast tanks. Ballast tanks are compartments on ships filled with water (ballast water) to provide stability and balance, control buoyancy, and adjust a ship's draft (credit to Google for that definition). In those cabins we could hear a gentle sloshing, a calming circulation of the water back and forth, like a womb. Even though I have no memory of my time in the womb, in case you were wondering. Anyway, back to the current story at hand. Windows are a prized possession on the ship. I thought the window would be the perfect spot for the vinyl, above our bed here in Madagascar.

I carefully placed each vinyl letter on our little, but amazing, cabin window with a view of the dock/port and was disappointed when I realized my friend made a mistake in printing the vinyl and I had a quote that read, “Let Your Faith be Bigger than Your Your.” The word “fear” was missing from the quote. I thought about writing to my friend and asking her to snail mail us the word “fear,” but then thought about what can happen to mail/packages coming across the ocean. I don’t want my container ship with my mail to be hijacked by penguins (reference to the movie Madagascar) so I opted out of that idea. We are only here until the middle of December, at this time, and the snail mail may not even make it to us. 

I had already placed all the vinyl lettering on the window except for the last “your” and debated taking it down. Then, my husband, Dustin, pointed out an excellent truth. He read the quote again.. “Let Your Faith be Bigger than Your..” and he said I should fill in the blank. I was confused for a moment and then God reminded me. “Let me/Your Faith in Me, be more than just your fears. Let me be bigger…I am bigger…” God wants to be a part of my life, all of it, not just my fears.. He is bigger than my failures, disappointments, addictions, pain, regrets, unfulfilled dreams, hopes, insecurities, needs, desires, and fears… He is bigger than YOURS as well…