There is something about building faith that allows us to have dreams and there is something about faithlessness that doesn’t.

Life will always be full of change and full of lessons. The important thing, I see now, is to keep the faith. 

The fact of the matter is, the Universe has a lot of lessons to teach many people, and we are, believe it or not, not the center of it.

The reality is that life can be extraordinarily painful, put us all through some BLEEP, and still create healing and growth. In fact, those wounds acquired on the battlefield are often the ones that force us to grow up and get better the fastest. 

Too many of us think believing in God (or Good) and having faith requires sainthood in order to participate. BLEEP that. That’s a total crock of bullBLEEP.

If you think about it, having faith is kind of a selfish act. It’s about saving ourselves no matter what anyone else believes, so that we can forge on and do the best we can. 

Is it just me, or has the American mantra of every man for themselves and something about bootstraps resulted in a mental health crisis?

The goal is not sainthood, perfection, or constant, unconditional love for ourselves or the broken BLEEPholes around us. The goal is having faith in the face of fear or heartache or failure. It’s the willingness to believe that makes a difference and the results are eventually astounding. 

Really sharp, sharp, brutal pain is often the wound that forces healing. We take a shiv to the kidneys in life and think, My God, I can’t go on like this.

I am along for this ride, I’m not sure where it’s taking me, but I like it. 

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.