Step one to solving any problem is admitting it to yourself. Step two might be accepting it, or maybe it is admitting it to other people. I am not really sure how the steps go. So, in the interest of personal growth and transparency, I have a confession to make: I have a problem.

The problem? It’s not that I buy books. It’s that I buy books faster than I can read them.

This is despite my efforts to limit how many books I buy. A year ago, I bought a shelf for my nightstand and set a boundary with myself: I am not allowed to buy more books until there is space on that shelf. It only worked for the first couple of months.

I currently find myself reading five books. Two fun books. Three nonfiction books to learn from. Reading a section from each, wandering through the many tabs of questions and wonder open in my mind.

I recently wrote a post called The Quiet Return to Creativity.

One of the things I have been returning to is writing, and not just for this blog, but for other creative endeavors. It’s as if this part of myself has been lying dormant for years beneath life’s expectations. Somehow, in this season of my life, it has awakened. I find myself wandering down rabbit trails of ideas, questions, and research. Unsurprisingly, those rabbit trails have only added to my book problem, and I continue buying books faster than I can read them.

Another predicament I face is that throughout the week, words, thoughts, ideas, and questions come to me. My schedule doesn’t allow me the freedom to explore new ideas when they appear. I created a dedicated note in the Notes app on my phone, but it quickly became a disorganized collection of free-flowing thoughts. By the evening or the weekend, it was difficult to sort through them and remember where each trail began or where it was leading.

My solution has been to start a creative journal devoted to organizing the imaginative side of my brain. I named my journal Return to Wonder.

Somewhere in this mess of problems between scattered notes and journal entries, I began to notice that my curiosity was teaching me something about faith.

I think somewhere along the way, we have confused faith with certainty when faith is really trust. There are two truths I am learning about God. I suspect I have known them for a while, but I am only now beginning to put them into words.

We can know God and who He is, and He knows us better than we know ourselves. At the same time, there is wonder in mystery and an incomprehensibility to God. He is infinite, and we are finite. We have to become comfortable with not fully comprehending God. There is beauty in walking with God through the mystery.

In our relationships, maybe this is where humility becomes important. There is humility in accepting the ambiguity of life. Perhaps this is what childlike faith looks like: accepting that we don’t have all the answers, being honest about it, remaining open to curiosity, and listening. Sometimes it is going on an adventure with God, walking beside Him as we explore the many questions life presents us with.

Maybe it’s searching for a book for over an hour in a bookstore.

I am currently on an adventure searching for a style of writing called lyrical writing. I was looking for Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle. I was running out of time before we had to leave.

I recruited a very kind employee to help. We searched for the book together. (I learned that the section had just been reorganized, and the books had not yet been put back in alphabetical order.) As we searched, he shared tips I had never considered when looking for books. Eventually, he had to ask another employee for help.

I finally had to tell them I needed to leave. While I was waiting in line with my other books, the employee found it. My husband and I looked over to see him waving the book in the air before running down the stairs to hand it to me.

It reminded me of walking with God in wonder.

Sometimes faith isn’t about finally having the answer. Sometimes it grows in the search itself, in the unexpected people who join us, in the moments we never planned, and in learning to trust God along the way.