When My Armor Starts To Rattle

This weekend, the young son of an extended relation departed for Heaven.

As I watched his mother publicly declare and decree the Word of God, encourage others to prepare for the coming Christ, and refuse to blame or deny God in the midst of her unimaginable pain, something in me went back.

Back to Emmanuel.

Back to the day I suffered the loss of my newborn grandson.

And I found myself thinking about what faith looks like when your heart is broken.

I know what the Word says. I know where my hope lies. I know that God is still God when life hurts in ways I cannot explain. I know that trusting Him is the right thing to do.

But this is no easy way.

Sometimes we tell the stories of women of faith and remember only their armor. We remember Deborah, rising as a mother in Israel and helping lead a nation to victory. We remember Esther, putting her own life on the line and walking courageously before a king.

We celebrate the warrior women.

But inside every Deborah and Esther, I believe there is also something softer.

There is lace under the armor.

There is still a woman underneath the warrior.

And Scripture shows us her, too.

I think about the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. God had blessed her with the son she had never dared ask for—and then that child died in her arms.

She laid him down and went looking for the man of God.

When Gehazi saw her coming and asked whether everything was well with her, her husband and her child, she answered:

“It is well.”

Those three words hit differently when you understand what was waiting back at her house.

Her child was dead.

Yet she said, “It is well.”

But I don’t believe it is well meant I am not hurting.

It didn’t mean I understand this.

It didn’t mean I wanted this.

And it certainly didn’t mean I am okay.

Because when she finally reached Elisha, this same woman who had declared it is well fell at his feet and held on to him. Her grief poured out until Elisha recognized that her soul was in deep distress.

Both things were true.

It was well.
And her soul was hurting.

That’s faith.

Maybe we have sometimes mistaken faith for the absence of pain.

We have admired the woman standing in her armor without realizing that underneath it, she may be shaking so badly that the armor rattles.

I stand on the Word.

But sometimes my armor rattles.

I carry the shield of faith, but sometimes a little lace peeks out from underneath it.

That lace is my femininity. My tenderness. My compassion. My vulnerability. The part of me that still feels deeply even after life has given me plenty of reasons to become hard.

There are tears underneath the helmet.

There is a tender heart behind the breastplate.

There are trembling hands holding the sword.

And none of that means the armor isn’t working.

God never required me to become hard in order to survive hard things.

He didn’t ask me to stop feeling so I could become faithful.

He didn’t tell me that grief cancels faith or that tears invalidate trust.

Sometimes faith is not a woman standing triumphantly on a mountain with her sword raised toward Heaven.

Sometimes faith is a grieving mother making her way toward the man of God, carrying pain no mother should have to carry, somehow finding enough breath to say:

“It is well.”

Sometimes faith sounds like:

God, this hurts.

God, I don’t understand.

God, I would never have chosen this.

God, I don’t know how I am going to carry this.

But I still believe You.

So if my armor rattles, let it rattle.

If the lace underneath shows, let it show.

If tears run down my face while I am declaring the Word, let them fall.

Because none of those things mean I have lost my faith.

They simply prove there is still a woman underneath the armor.

A woman who can grieve and believe.

Who can hurt and worship.

Who can have questions and still trust.

Who can be brokenhearted without becoming bitter.

Who can say this is more than I know how to bear and somehow, through tears, still whisper:

“It is well.”

My faith is not proven by whether my armor rattles.

My faith is proven by what I choose to stand on while it does.

“Stand therefore…”
Ephesians 6:14

There is lace under my armor.

And I think I’m finally learning that God never asked me to hide it.

Love,
Chelle