A Quiet Place… Without Monsters
There is something about building faith that allows us to have dreams and there is something about faithlessness that doesn’t. Without faith, I was constantly questioning my choices, my future, my past. I actually have known what my passions and talents were from a very early age, but didn’t let myself treat them as a reality until relatively recently.
I did everything I could to undermine my own purpose, whether it was investing in distractions, reading up on all the reasons why something won’t work, chasing or working on other peoples dreams. The list feels almost endless. I have enough faith now to know that all that doubt and all those disturbances were building toward finding faith and establishing real commitment to myself, my own understanding of God (or Good), harnessing my own God-given talents and skills, and investing in my own future, but man, was it MESSY doing it without faith for SO long.
Now that I have faith, I feel allowed to invest in myself and my future. I feel like my skills have value and my dreams will be made real. Looking back, living without faith was like one big investment in negative outcomes. I don’t necessarily lament all those hours I spent convincing myself I couldn’t do X, Y, or Z, because it all brought me to a place of faith, but I do feel a little sad for that poor soul who spent so much time worrying their little BLEEP off when there was another way. It’s so strange what self-doubt and a lack of faith can do to a person.
I regularly write about prayer being an exercise in active engagement, when faithlessness is the perfect breeding ground for negative rumination. That has certainly been true for me. Prayer and meditation now feel like active participation in building a life I love and have dreamt about. It’s such a simple thing that we all seem to avoid, that quiet place we come to as a last resort, where we go when everything stops, when time stands still, and we ask for all we want or desperately need. It feels like the center of the universe. It feels like communing with God. It feels like a Good place where dreams are made. It feels like grounding and drawing strength and so much more.
Whether that’s just me adding meaning to quiet time or that I am actually connecting to the Source doesn’t matter to me, and maybe it shouldn’t matter to you either. Dropping cynicism and just being willing to experiment with another way of being was the best thing I ever did for my spirit, sense of self worth, and future. It gave me permission to dream and to feel like an active participant in a future I could believe in.