What to Do When Your Faith Is Shaken and Everything Feels Like It’s Falling Apart

How to navigate the darkest moments, rebuild your faith, and find strength in the struggle.

In order to make things better, you first have to stop making them worse.

It’s like floating around in a boat that has holes in it. While you may be successfully bailing out water, there’s always more coming in. The goal isn’t to bail faster. It’s stopping everything, taking a moment to plug up the holes, getting rid of the remaining water, and continuing onward.

Accepting that reality is crucial.

But why is it so hard at times in our lives to truly embrace that?

Maybe it comes down to having difficulties identifying what the holes are in the first place—because the boat is just an analogy.

You can feel the water rising, the pressure building, but pinpointing the source can be elusive. Or, and this is something I’ve experienced many times, it’s the overwhelming amount of paths you can follow to fix something. The endless options can lead you in circles, and you never end up sticking with one long enough to see the job through.

There are countless ways to address something. And many of those suggestions can be incredibly helpful. But when your mind enters “which one is the best?” mode, it can easily get caught in the trap of perfectionism. And perfectionism is one of the fastest ways to ensure nothing ever gets done.

The truth is that half of the battle is identifying the problem. If you can do that, you’re already most of the way there. But knowing what’s wrong is never enough on its own.

The other half of the equation is choosing a course of action and actually sticking with it. That’s arguably the hardest part of all this. Disciplining yourself to dig in the same spot, over and over again, is where the real work is. It’s about having faith that if you keep going, you’ll eventually reach the destination—even if you can’t see it yet.

But if you’ve never traveled that path before, and you have no context for what’s possible, it can feel terrifying at times. It’s easy to start over, try something new, or even return to what’s familiar. In fact, almost anything feels easier than sticking with what you decided to do, especially when results aren’t immediate or guaranteed.

What you know is comfortable…even if deep down, your wisdom tells you it’s not for you anymore.

::gulp::

A while back, I had a dream that life works like the rings of a tree.

Each ring signifies a period of growth in your life. Every ring tells a story—one of a lesson, a trial, or a moment of clarity. But as you hear the call to adventure and rise to the challenge in front of you, you expand outward into the next ring.

The rings are all about expansion and depth.

Some rings tell stories of growth, while others reflect times of drought, stillness, or even pain. But they are all part of who you are and who you will become. The tree keeps growing, no matter what season it’s in.

In my own journey, I’ve been stuck in the same ring for quite some time. I’ve made attempts. I’ve succeeded, and I’ve failed. I’ve risen to the occasion, and I’ve quit more times than I’d like to admit. But in my heart, I know exactly what I need to do to move forward. I know what I need to let go of and what I need to embrace in order to expand into the next ring.

There’s a threshold I have to cross, and it’s rooted in time.

The tricky part is, I’m uncertain of how long it will take to reach the summit. All I know is that what I’ve done in the past caused me to slide right back down the mountain. I’ve learned that climbing the mountain isn’t just about effort—it’s about commitment to the future and faith in the present.

Ah, the lessons make sense now.

Years ago, I experienced such extreme losses that both my faith and my belief in what was possible for me was crushed. That’s what devastating moments do to you—they make you question everything. They can make you doubt your value, your worth, and your ability to succeed.

And when your faith is shaken, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. It’s easy to focus on the water flooding the boat and forget that you have the tools to plug the holes. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the weight of past failures and lose sight of the potential for future success.

But the truth is, you are valuable. You are worthy.

And if you give yourself what you need to heal, you will.

That’s the catch—you have to give it to yourself. No one else can do it for you. You have to be the one to patch the holes, to bail out the water, and to steer the boat in the right direction. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

Where I stand now, after one of the most stressful periods of my life, is a return to an idea that came to me a long time ago.

It could be better than you’ve ever imagined.

That’s what faith is telling me. But the cost of admission is my wholehearted belief in that idea. No half-hearted attempts, no second-guessing myself. Just pure, unwavering belief that what’s on the other side is better than anything I’ve known before.

This ring of life has taught me more through suffering than I ever thought possible.

It’s taught me to stay in the moment, to look toward the future while staying rooted in the present. To walk forward with an open heart, even when I can’t see what lies ahead. To trust that even though I can’t always see the path, I’m being guided every step of the way.

There’s a ring to this, after all.

And maybe that’s the whole point of life—to keep expanding, to keep growing, even when the growing pains are real. To know that every ring, every chapter, every step is part of a larger story.

The boat, the holes, the water—it’s all part of the journey. And the only way to move forward is to trust yourself, to plug the holes when you can, and to keep rowing relentlessly.

And who knows? It could be better than you’ve ever imagined.

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Here’s how you can integrate this:

Intention: To regain faith in yourself and your journey, even during life’s most challenging moments.

Reflection: Take a moment to think about a time when your faith in yourself or your path was shaken. What helped you keep going, or what could have helped you at the time? What lessons did that experience leave you with that you can draw on today?

Practice: This week, identify one “hole in the boat”—an area in your life where you feel stuck or overwhelmed. Instead of focusing on everything at once, take one small, deliberate action to address it. Whether it’s making a call, setting a boundary, or dedicating time to self-care, commit to that one step. At the end of the week, reflect on the progress you’ve made and how it feels to take charge of your journey, even in small ways.

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Thank you for being here,
—Evan