When Faith Gets Hard

We asked children (ages 7-9), preteens (ages 10-12), and teenagers (ages 13-16) from around the world to write for the Review in August. The following article is one they produced. —Editors 

Keeping faith in a public school—outside the Christian community—is both physically and spiritually challenging. Yet it is not impossible to build a new boundary, one that extends beyond school walls.

Growing up, I often wrestled with doubt. Even though I was raised in a pastoral family, I was not immune to temptation. Being a “pastor’s kid” (PK) didn’t shield me from the struggles every Christian faces. In fact, my siblings and I noticed that PKs are often the ones left in a blind spot—overlooked and quietly drifting. Many secular things in this world are attractive, and when God seems silent, temptation grows louder. But before blaming the circumstances, we have to ask ourselves: Have we truly made God our first priority? Do we pray? Do we communicate with Him—or do we reach out only when we need something?

My mother taught us early on how to stay rooted in God despite life’s difficulties. My siblings and I were raised to pray first thing in the morning and last thing at night, to begin each day with gratitude and Scripture. Every morning and evening we had family worship. As a child I found it tedious—worship could last an hour, and my legs would ache from sitting still. For an energetic kid, it felt like torture. But as I grew older, I began to understand that this routine was the most effective way to stay connected to God and remember His presence. What once felt like an obligation became the most valuable part of my day. It filled something in my heart. It gave me not just comfort but strength. When I failed to resist temptation, I found my footing again through prayer and time in the Word. Ironically, being half-pushed into this routine during busy school weeks is what kept my faith from becoming a weekend-only practice.

Challenging Theories

Another challenge for my faith was my classroom experience. Learning, discussing, and sometimes memorizing theories that contradicted my beliefs was genuinely difficult. Public school introduces ideas that can shake a student’s faith—and the world reinforces the idea that doubt is normal, even intelligent. For me, it helped that I had parents always guiding me. Whenever I felt my faith starting to waver, I brought my doubts to them immediately. But I also knew I couldn’t rely on their answers forever—I had to work through the questions myself, or I’d never truly own my faith.

The moment I remember most clearly was sitting in my biology class, staring at a diagram of the evolutionary tree. My teacher walked us through it with such confidence—how single-celled organisms became fish, fish became amphibians, amphibians became mammals, and eventually, after millions of years of gradual change, human beings emerged from a common ancestor shared with primates. The class nodded along. My lab partner highlighted her notes. I sat there feeling like the ground had shifted slightly beneath my feet. It wasn’t that I had never heard of evolution before. I had. But hearing it presented as settled, unquestionable fact—illustrated in full color in a textbook, backed by my teacher’s authority—made it feel different. For the first time a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispered: What if they’re right?

I didn’t say anything in class. I copied the notes, turned in the worksheet, and went home carrying that uneasy feeling with me. That night at family worship I was distracted. My father noticed, and asked what was on my mind. I told him what we had learned, and I admitted, quietly, that I didn’t know how to argue against it. I felt almost ashamed saying it out loud. He didn’t panic. He opened the Bible to Genesis 1:27 and read it aloud: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” He read it slowly—not as a rebuttal, but as a reminder. There was no evolutionary chain in that verse. No gradual process. No common ancestor. God created human beings deliberately, specifically, and in His own image—and He named that distinction clearly from the very beginning. My father told me that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith—it’s the beginning of a deeper one, if you bring it to God instead of letting it fester alone.

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith—it’s the beginning of a deeper one, if you bring it to God instead of letting it fester alone.

That night I started doing my own research. I cross-referenced what my textbook said with what Scripture said. I looked into the gaps in evolutionary theory that my teacher hadn’t mentioned—the ones scientists themselves still debated. The more I dug, the more I realized that the confidence of the classroom didn’t mean the matter was closed. It meant I had more studying to do—not less. I went back to that class the next day still holding both things in tension. But something had shifted. I wasn’t just passively receiving information anymore. I was thinking critically, comparing it against what I believed, and choosing—actively choosing—what I held to be true. That exercise strengthened my faith.

Watching From the Outside

The hardest part of keeping the Sabbath wasn’t any single Saturday—it was the accumulation of them. Since the Sabbath runs from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, that meant that nearly every important school conference and activity scheduled on a Saturday was, by default, one I had to sit out. Each time, I told myself it was fine. Each time, it took a little longer to actually believe it.

The ones that hurt the most weren’t the small things—they were the events that carried real momentum behind them. Homecoming was one of them. It wasn’t just a game and a dance. It was the event that the entire school built its energy around for weeks. Spirit Week, class competitions, the crowning ceremony—and then the game itself, where the student section was loudest and the sense of belonging was at its peak. Being there meant being woven into something bigger than yourself. It was the kind of shared experience that gave students an entire year’s worth of inside jokes, memories, and connections. I watched it happen from the outside, through the photos and videos that filled my feed that Saturday, getting dressed for church while my classmates got dressed for the game.

But the one that stung with the most weight was the band parade. I had been part of the school band, and our biggest performance of the year—a regional parade competition that drew scouts, directors from summer music programs, and representatives from universities with strong music departments—fell on a Saturday. These weren’t just people in the crowd. They were the kind of people who handed out audition invitations, scholarship information, and program opportunities on the spot to students who caught their eye. My bandmates came back talking about conversations they had had on the sidelines, contacts they had made, and follow-up emails already waiting in their inboxes. I had practiced every piece they performed. I knew every note. And I wasn’t there.

Missing that parade didn’t just mean missing a performance—it meant missing a room full of open doors that closed before I ever had a chance to walk through them. The relationships my bandmates formed that day, the directors who remembered their faces, the opportunities that grew out of a single afternoon—none of that was available to me the following Monday when I came back and pretended it was fine.

Words are powerful, but only when backed by action.

What I felt in those moments wasn’t just sadness—it was the specific ache of wondering whether my faith was costing me more than it was giving me. I prayed, but honestly, it felt more like a complaint than a conversation. I told God I didn’t understand why obedience had to be so hard. Why keeping His day holy meant watching my social life and future opportunities move forward without me, again and again.

My mother sat with me one evening after a particularly hard week and said something I didn’t expect: “God doesn’t waste preparation.” She reminded me that every hour I had spent rehearsing, every skill I had built, every effort I had poured in—none of it disappeared because I hadn’t been in the room. It was still in me. And it would find its way out somewhere else.

She was right, though it took me time to see it. A few months later a director from a local youth orchestra heard me play at a weekday evening recital and extended an invitation that opened more doors than that parade ever could have. It didn’t erase the ache of what I missed. But it reminded me that God had not forgotten the investments I had made—He was simply redirecting them toward something I couldn’t yet see.

Blue, Red, or Purple?

Around that same time, my mother shared something that reframed everything. She said: “Imagine people as colors. You are blue, and your friends are red. If blue tries to become red, it mixes and becomes purple. No matter how much red it adds, it can never be fully red—and now it can’t fully connect with the blues, either. But if blue stays blue, it becomes whole, and it naturally attracts other blues.”

That metaphor hit differently than I expected. My friends had always called me the quiet one, the nonchalant one, the one working to keep up with the conversation. That day I stopped trying to be purple. I chose to be fully, unapologetically blue—and the more whole I become, the more I attract people who resonate with who I actually am.

Words are powerful, but only when backed by action. Without action, words are empty. If we claim to be servants of God but don’t reflect that in how we live, our faith rings hollow. Jesus came, not just to teach us, but to show us what a Christian looks like—and then He gave us the gospel so that we could extend that to others.

People often ask me: “How do you share your faith without forcing it on people?” My answer is simple: I don’t preach at anyone. I just try to live like Christ—acting with kindness and integrity in ordinary moments, letting that speak for itself. I still argue with my siblings. I still have my sensitive, difficult moments. But the most important thing is that I keep finding my way back to Jesus through the hard parts—because I am the best version of myself when I am with Him.

I am only a sophomore, and I already know there is so much more ahead of me—more Saturdays, more choices, more moments my faith will cost me something. But I also know that every time I have chosen God over the moment, He has never left that choice unrewarded. I hope that whoever reads this finds the same to be true.