The Sticky Note on the Bathroom Mirror I Stopped Reading Months Ago
The Sticky Note on the Bathroom Mirror I Stopped Reading Months Ago
There is a yellow sticky note stuck to the corner of my bathroom mirror that says "He Is Good" in my own handwriting, written in shaky blue highlighter during a week eight months ago when I needed to see it fifteen times a day just to make it to bed sober. I wrote it the morning after a phone call I never want to repeat. For weeks I read it every time I brushed my teeth, some mornings saying it out loud like I was trying to convince a stranger. Lately I just brush around it, the way my eyes slide past the soap dish and the light switch, a fixture in the room instead of a sentence I actually believe. I noticed that this week, and it unsettled me more than the crisis that made me write it, because at least back then I knew I was struggling to believe something true. Now I had quietly stopped noticing I had stopped.
I am nine years sober, and I used to assume doubt happened once, in a dramatic season, then got settled for good. What that faded note taught me is that doubt rarely announces itself as a crisis of faith. More often it shows up as a note you stop reading, a prayer said out of habit with nobody really listening on either end, a sentence about God's goodness that used to cost you something to believe and now costs you nothing because you quietly stopped asking it to.
Scripture does not pretend this kind of doubt disqualifies a person from faith. A desperate father brought his suffering son to Jesus and said the truest sentence I have ever read about my own condition. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24, NKJV). He did not choose between the two halves of that sentence. He held both at once, belief and its shortage, in front of the only Person who could do anything about either. David did not manage his doubt more tidily. "How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1, NKJV). That is not a man who has lost his faith. That is a man being honest inside it, which turns out to be a different thing entirely.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten that note read again with any real conviction. I can remind myself accurately that God has been faithful before, that my own sober years are themselves a kind of proof, that doubting Him now makes no logical sense given everything I have seen Him do. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever made the note feel like anything more than paper on glass. Faith was never going to be produced by my own tally of evidence. The writer of Hebrews defines it as something else entirely. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV). Not evidence already proven to my satisfaction; my own eyesight was never the instrument meant to settle this. Paul tells the Corinthians the same thing as a fact about how he lives, not a theory. "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own best arguments never could. Paul draws a line between two ways of operating, and the difference is not how smart the thinking is but what it is set on. "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:5-6, NKJV). My doubt was never going to be out-thought by my own flesh, since my flesh was the very thing doing the doubting; it needed a different mind set on it entirely. Paul tells the same church where that different kind of knowing comes from, and it is not reached by harder study. "But as it is written: 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.' But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10, NKJV). Revealed, not deduced. Jesus names the exact shape of the faith He is after in people who will never get the proof Thomas got in that locked room. "Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29, NKJV). That blessing was written for a bathroom mirror, a thousand ordinary mornings from the moment I wrote that note.
I read it again this morning, out loud, slower than I have in months, and I will not tell you the fog lifted all at once. It did not need to. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which note you have stopped reading and which sentence about Him you now say out of habit instead of belief. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you feeling certain of it first, and He has told you plainly, so there is no doubting the promise even on the days you doubt everything else. "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6, NKJV).
Scriptures used (NKJV): Mark 9:24; Psalm 13:1; Hebrews 11:1; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Romans 8:5-6; 1 Corinthians 2:9-10; John 20:29; Deuteronomy 31:6.
There is a yellow sticky note stuck to the corner of my bathroom mirror that says "He Is Good" in my own handwriting, written in shaky blue highlighter during a week eight months ago when I needed to see it fifteen times a day just to make it to bed sober. I wrote it the morning after a phone call I never want to repeat. For weeks I read it every time I brushed my teeth, some mornings saying it out loud like I was trying to convince a stranger. Lately I just brush around it, the way my eyes slide past the soap dish and the light switch, a fixture in the room instead of a sentence I actually believe. I noticed that this week, and it unsettled me more than the crisis that made me write it, because at least back then I knew I was struggling to believe something true. Now I had quietly stopped noticing I had stopped.
I am nine years sober, and I used to assume doubt happened once, in a dramatic season, then got settled for good. What that faded note taught me is that doubt rarely announces itself as a crisis of faith. More often it shows up as a note you stop reading, a prayer said out of habit with nobody really listening on either end, a sentence about God's goodness that used to cost you something to believe and now costs you nothing because you quietly stopped asking it to.
Scripture does not pretend this kind of doubt disqualifies a person from faith. A desperate father brought his suffering son to Jesus and said the truest sentence I have ever read about my own condition. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24, NKJV). He did not choose between the two halves of that sentence. He held both at once, belief and its shortage, in front of the only Person who could do anything about either. David did not manage his doubt more tidily. "How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1, NKJV). That is not a man who has lost his faith. That is a man being honest inside it, which turns out to be a different thing entirely.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten that note read again with any real conviction. I can remind myself accurately that God has been faithful before, that my own sober years are themselves a kind of proof, that doubting Him now makes no logical sense given everything I have seen Him do. Every sentence is true, and none of it has ever made the note feel like anything more than paper on glass. Faith was never going to be produced by my own tally of evidence. The writer of Hebrews defines it as something else entirely. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV). Not evidence already proven to my satisfaction; my own eyesight was never the instrument meant to settle this. Paul tells the Corinthians the same thing as a fact about how he lives, not a theory. "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own best arguments never could. Paul draws a line between two ways of operating, and the difference is not how smart the thinking is but what it is set on. "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:5-6, NKJV). My doubt was never going to be out-thought by my own flesh, since my flesh was the very thing doing the doubting; it needed a different mind set on it entirely. Paul tells the same church where that different kind of knowing comes from, and it is not reached by harder study. "But as it is written: 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.' But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10, NKJV). Revealed, not deduced. Jesus names the exact shape of the faith He is after in people who will never get the proof Thomas got in that locked room. "Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29, NKJV). That blessing was written for a bathroom mirror, a thousand ordinary mornings from the moment I wrote that note.
I read it again this morning, out loud, slower than I have in months, and I will not tell you the fog lifted all at once. It did not need to. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which note you have stopped reading and which sentence about Him you now say out of habit instead of belief. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you feeling certain of it first, and He has told you plainly, so there is no doubting the promise even on the days you doubt everything else. "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6, NKJV).
Scriptures used (NKJV): Mark 9:24; Psalm 13:1; Hebrews 11:1; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Romans 8:5-6; 1 Corinthians 2:9-10; John 20:29; Deuteronomy 31:6.
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