I need chocolate like a cigarette, and I circle the house, desperate. I settle for stale chocolate chips, until I remember the dark chocolate I bought for the teacher birthdays.

I think about Lysa’s book, Made to Crave, and I know it’s right what she says about craving God, not food. I think about Eve while I look at the white bowl filled with apples on my kitchen table. I take another bite of chocolate, wondering about my own cravings–I crave control and knowing, attention and approval. Comfort. And also, food.

My mind wanders to my most honest center, the place where I don’t have the desire to be an expert about anything, the place where I am small. I think about these books I’m writing, the ones that beat through my veins like hot blood, and I know that it will take miracle work to finish them because I’m just a kid, and what do I know?

But maybe being a kid isn’t so bad, these little ones who bring tummy aches and splinters straight to their parents. And I have a strange urge for a tummy ache, to bring my broken to my Daddy and say, It’s broken and I can’t fix it.

I want bows tied up like closure, like all-grown-up, but God gives comfort and gaping-open, child-like faith. Over and over, he gives. I am desperate, but I don’t wanna be. But only the hungry search for food, and only the sick need a healer. I consider what it looks like to delight in my weakness and to know a strength greater than me, me, me.

I’m changing my belief about faith, about the way it ought to look. It’s good as it is, even without the bows. Maybe especially without them, because this kind of faith feels less bubblegum, more grit.

I used to be afraid of the grit. But that was back when I knew everything.

by Emily Freeman, who blogs with gritty belief at Chatting at the Sky.