FAITH MONTH: DAY 10: “To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ― G.K. Chesterton
Faith is a funny thing. Most of us have deep and abiding faith that we are somehow screwed in this deal. I find that funny. We are so certain to hang on to that belief that any information to the contrary is hard for us to process.
This is an interesting exercise in self-absorbed fear. Sit down and write all the ways you know your life is harder, sadder, more intolerable than others. Then write why you believe that is true. As you process these statements of “fact”, look at where you may have received this information. Most of the time, we made it all up. This is our ego’s way of controlling us and making us believe its lies of doom and gloom. I know that this is the brick wall I had to contend with when I got here.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith, I did. But all my faith was taking me in the direction of DOWN. It was a certainty, I could tell you, that I was going to suffer horribly with illness, pain, solitude, insolvency, and all manner of gloomy outcomes for the rest of my life. OMG! The drama! The Poor-Little-Me! It was an incredibly sad tale of woe.
And NONE of it was true. It was all the negativity in my head that would not let up, 24-7, it ran on and on…and sadly, THIS was what I chose to believe and have faith in. WTF???
And I listened to the other people in the rooms who talked about their miraculous lives and KNEW it was great for them. I was horribly envious and downright pissed that I was going to be the one left out of the recovery miracles. Boo-hoo-hoo!
And it began to shift. Things began to feel different, even though my head has NEVER let up! Contrary action was such a great gift for me. I NEVER FEEL like doing the work, but I do it. I know it will NEVER be any different for me, but I go to the meetings, take the commitments, show up for panels and to be of service (H+I has always been my gig), and write the gratitude letters to my Creator every single day.
And you know what, it HAS WORKED!
And my life has been less than movie-star quality every single day. And it looks very much different than those fantasies my ego likes to create and then pull away from me. But I am happy, almost all the time, way more than I ever would have imagined.
Because I dared to believe that maybe I was wrong. God, I still hate that line! It seemed unbelievable to me then and still does sometimes, when I need a good convincing that I really am happy. I DO question it, you know. Still got the same damn ego, SPM!! Dammit!
But it does not matter, my faith is shifted to another paradigm. I now believe that I can be happy with an old face and body, with extra pounds, with or without money, with or without work, with or without a partner, with or without new shoes (!), with or without those long lists of things I believed I had to have and that held the key to my happiness.
It is in my heart, in my God spot, in the place I used to believe was my secret hiding place; that place where I held my real dreams and loves and joys. That is where happiness is; always has been. And the last place I ever thought to look. Today I live there almost all the time. And it took believing you when you told me things that I truly did not dare to believe or even hope for. What a miracle that is!
Dolphin Hug 