There are nights when there’s no prayer left in you – just the tick of the clock and a heart run clean out of words. My friend Faith Eury Cho knows that kind of night. She and her husband packed up their four little ones to follow Jesus into planting a church in New Jersey. Within months, everything they’d gone all in for fell apart. Faith Eury Cho‘s story is one of the brave, vulnerable chapters in Honest to God: Daring to Trust When You Don’t Understand, a book I’m humbled to share a chapter in, gathered and curated by my dearest friend Toni Nieuwhof. What Faith discovered after weeping over a piano with sticky keys is exactly what I need to remember when God feels silent. Pull up a chair, friend. It’s an absolute joy to welcome Faith and Toni to the farm table today…

Guest Post Toni Nieuwhof

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What were you doing that night?“

This was the question I asked God whenever an uninvited and unwelcome memory of a particular night would revisit me. It was the night of my breaking point, but I waited until the children were asleep before I allowed myself to shatter to pieces.

It was the summer of 2020.

Like the rest of the world, my family of six was navigating “unprecedented times.” We left every comfort we had at the end of December 2019 to follow Jesus into the unknown – starting a church family in northern New Jersey.

By March of 2020, I started to think that, perhaps, we heard God wrong.

Within a matter of weeks, everything fell apart—the plans, the strategies, and the support. Although my husband and I attempted to maintain brave faces for the children, a cry began emerging from our hearts, first in whispers and eventually in shouts: “What are you doing, Jesus?”

Those who advised us said we were in a wilderness. I felt that term made it sound too conveniently holy and tidy for this reality.

It was the death of ministry dreams we went all in for. 

It was the loss of friendships we never imagined could end. 

It was the bone-shattering pressure of having to find income and feed four little children. 

“Instead of allowing my faith to interpret the hollow of that night, I allowed my pain to tell me how to interpret it instead.”

I could not picture a future. I didn’t have a way out of this mess. I regularly awoke in panic attacks, and sleep evaded me. After months of this, I found myself up at 1:30 a.m. in a dimly lit living room, gazing at our family piano. 

It was our meeting place of choice, the Holy Spirit and me. I had laid out my sacrifice of praise over these ivories, especially during tough times. Now, some of the keys were sticky, courtesy of the toddlers who would sidle up and smudge the leftovers of dinner as they played, too.

But on this night, I just stared at those sticky keys. I couldn’t even imagine my fingers hovering over them, desiring to express something. 

No petition was left. 

Nothing came out.

Like the ashes after a fire, I had no flicker left in me to wave down God’s favor and attention. No song left to sing. No prayer left to pray. I didn’t understand it then, but I was wrestling with God. My hot, salty tears expressed for me what I could not. Looking back, those counted as prayers too.

My heaving shoulders begged Jesus to relent. 

My guttural lament rummaged through the losses to find his face. 

My tear-soaked lips asked if this was some sadistic test of faithfulness that I was so obviously failing. 

The unexpected gift of pain is that it will leave you dissatisfied with religion alone. As I unraveled, I could not leave the piano with anything less than Jesus himself. No one else was enough. Pain demanded more. I wanted a jaw-dropping encounter that would leave me awestruck with wonder. I wanted a vision, showing me what I needed to do next. I wanted his audible voice to lull my trembling heart to rest.

Instead, I sat, unspooling grief until the very last thread of it unraveled. The only thing I had at the end of it was the ticking of the living room clock. 

Yet the question remained in me for some time. What were you doing that night, Jesus?

All I remember of that agonizing night was silence and stillness.

Whenever the memory would arise, I was tempted with offense toward God all over again. Where was the miracle that should have interrupted my aching sobs?

Instead of allowing my faith to interpret the hollow of that night, I allowed my pain to tell me how to interpret it instead. Maybe God was waiting for me to get my act straight. Maybe he was a cruel master. Maybe he abandoned me. Ultimately, I knew better on a cerebral level, but the rest of my being was not convinced. 

“I was waiting for a miracle that would fix it all, when he gave me the miracle of his unconditional presence instead—the most precious kind of miracle.“

So I asked Jesus, again and again: What were you doing that night?

For months, I did not receive an experience or revelation that could satiate my thirst for a concrete answer. However, one afternoon while I was flipping through the pages of the Psalms, I came across Psalm 3:2–5 (CSB): 

Many say about me,

“There is no help for him in God.” Selah

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,

my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

I cry aloud to the Lord,

and he answers me from his holy mountain. Selah

I lie down and sleep;

I wake again because the Lord sustains me.

It was then I heard it, the answer I kept knocking for. 

“Faith, I was with you.” 

While interrogating my Father King all these months about what he was doing, I didn’t think to ask where he was.

I looked for him by seeking epic, mystical encounters.

I wanted him to wow me with a vision or a dream.

“I was looking for the extraordinary to find him, when it was the ordinary that revealed him.“

I wanted to fill the space of uncertainty with undeniable assurance.

I was waiting for a miracle that would fix it all, when he gave me the miracle of his unconditional presence instead—the most precious kind of miracle. The God who multiplies loaves and fishes and parts the Red Sea is the God who helped me to rest and wake again the next day. He was with me. That’s what he was doing.

I was looking for the extraordinary to find him, when it was the ordinary that revealed him.

He was with me when I questioned him. He’s with me still to this day. 

He’s also with you, friend, whether you are at church giving him your most exuberant praises or bitterly wailing on the bathroom floor. 

He’s with you when your faith is but a whisper. Just as he was with me over those sticky keys. 

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A Deeply Life-Giving Conversation: BellTower Stories

Ann Voskamp and Toni Nieuwhof discuss Toni’s new book, Honest to God: Daring to Trust When You Don’t Understand . Come join us in BellTower Stories, up in the 1896 bell tower our little Village Table church, as “the bells are the voice of the church, with tones that touch and search.” (Longfellow)

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