Sometimes, the things we hold onto the tightest are the very things that are preventing growth and opportunity. Sometimes, the great love of our lives is the only thing standing between us and the most important thing we will ever learn about ourselves.

The fact of the matter is, most of us coming from a place of faithlessness have to spend a lot of time fighting faith before we turn to it... We have to try all other avenues before we choose the easy street. We think, crikey, it can’t be that simple.

I recently grasped onto this concept of surrender for real. I’ve never quite understood it before, but something about the divine timing of something someone said to me and heartache made it really sink in. I feel like a giant church bell was wrung with my skull. DOONNNNG…

Or maybe, more fittingly, DUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH. 

Every time I want to pick up a well worn worry object and go all Sméagol on it (that was a Lord of the Rings reference, work with me here, people), I have been saying to myself God (or Good), I surrender X to you with love.

I probably should add, Because I don’t know what the BLEEP to do with it anymore, and I believe you do.

I said a prayer about surrender recently and I meant it. Hardly anything has happened. The clouds did not part. My problems were not instantly all solved according to my wishes. I did not become an Earth-bound angel. Talk about BLEEPING annoying...

I hereby turn everything over to Good (or God) to see what happens with my life. Perhaps I will finally get what I need rather than what I think I want.

You are all witnesses. Let’s see what happens together, shall we? 

The Spider-Man films, and all hero movies, actually, do a really good job of reinforcing the message that we have to sacrifice our loved ones in the name of our life’s mission which is…

BULLLLLLLLLLLBLEEEEEEP

I literally prayed if this situation is Good for me, let it stay in my life. If it is not Good for me, let it dissolve. And by the end of the day, it dissolved. So by God, I’m going to agree with Good (or God) for once in my life, and just go where my prayer takes me.

Wish me luck, y’all. 

Sometimes I worry that in a world full of cynics, people might stop inviting me to dinner parties, because my glass is annoyingly half-full. This BLEEP is real. 

Modern media talks about bad times all the time. That messaging alone makes it easy to turn a critical eye on life, ourselves, each other. It’s the opposite of rose-colored glasses. It’s BLEEP-colored glasses. If the world is BLEEP, why imagine we are destined for anything else? 

That’s the thing about faith - it turns out that it is such a lovely, wonderful, beneficent thing that cynics are right to be skeptical of any faith that has to be sold to us with vociferous exultation. If the seller seems to be a snake oil salesman, they probably are selling snake oil. 

It doesn’t matter if God really is answering our prayers or our powerful, potent brains are just reframing certain problems with more positive solutions. What matters is we start building self-fulfilling prophecies looking up, rather than down.

There’s something really magical about prayer. Maybe I’m just so special and so enlightened that I actually do just get whatever I want when I pray (HA!). What’s more likely is that there is something about prayer that tunes us into the abundance of what we already have. 

It’s okay to have enough faith in Good (or God) that we reach a place where others are unsettled by our contentment. They may be so unsettled that they ask us about it, and we may even have the strength to be real about choosing to have faith in a faithless world.

Sometimes, I wonder if God is up in Heaven (or whatever plane Good is operating from) and looking around for a brick to throw at me. That’s often what it takes for me to put two and two together.

God (or Good) doesn’t clean every room in a spiritual house all at once. Some areas of my life have gotten a deep clean and others are messier than ever. All I can do is help move furniture around and be useful while Good (or God) does the dirty work.

Some people seek signs or guidance, and that’s all well and good, but I will say that if urgent enough, God will hit us over the head with a hammer to make certain things very clear.

Living life with a little faith (or a lot, for that matter) is not all sunshine and roses. We’re all still capable of being complete BLEEP-ups.

With faith, a better baseline is established, hope for the future becomes a reality, and the most important factor is, we start to see and believe that we are worthy of better.

I have been willing to have a little faith in dreaming dreams with God (or Good) as my benefactor, and therefore it only seems natural to tip my cap to the God (or Good) of my choosing for all our hard work. Penance not required.