Faith Over Doubt

The other week, I was walking past my son’s room when something caught my eye — our little whiteboard sitting crooked on the wall. Scrawled across it, in messy handwriting that could rival a doctor’s prescription pad, were just two words:

Faith | Doubt.

At first, I thought maybe it was some kind of school vocabulary list he forgot to erase. But then I stood there a moment longer, and something about it just stopped me. Those two tiny words carried a weight that didn’t feel accidental.

My son’s had a rough few weeks at school — the kind where you can tell his spirit’s a little bruised. The kind where he drags his backpack like it weighs a hundred pounds and sighs like a man paying bills. He’s been trying hard, but I can see that invisible battle between wanting to believe things will get better and wondering if they ever really do.

So seeing faith and doubt side by side felt like more than a coincidence. It felt like God scribbled a message right through my child’s dry-erase marker.

Because honestly, that’s exactly how life feels sometimes — like you’re standing between two words, unsure which one you’re supposed to live by today.

But the thing that got me? He wrote faith first.

Not doubt | faith. Nope. He gave faith the front seat.

Maybe without even realizing it, he was declaring something—something braver than he probably knew.

And that’s how God works, isn’t it? Sneaking wisdom into our days through the smallest moments — a whiteboard, a child’s messy handwriting, or a weary mom standing in the hallway still in her coffee-stained T-shirt, having a full-blown spiritual revelation before dinner.

It reminded me that doubt doesn’t cancel out faith; it gives it room to grow. Faith isn’t loud or fancy—it’s scribbled in the margins of ordinary days, where we’re just trying to figure it out.

Now, every time I walk by that board, I smile. It’s still there, faded but there, those two words side by side. I haven’t erased them, mostly because I think they’re preaching a better sermon than I could ever manage before my second cup of coffee.

Because maybe faith isn’t about pretending we never doubt—it’s about choosing which word to write down first.