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It’s starting to seem like building faith is a little bit like going through bootcamp in the military. This assumption is based entirely on what I know about bootcamp from the movies, so take it with a grain of salt. Instead of God (or Good) operating like a screaming drill sergeant, It/She/He/Source is speaking in soothing tones, telling us to get up and try again, to keep at it, that we will make it if we keep trying.
As an aside, sometimes I think God sounds a little bit like Wayne Dyer or Bruce Willis when he’s in a good mood, but that’s probably because I’ve been listening to a lot of Dyer in the car lately and I’ve always been a Willis fan. It also occurs to me now that I may think God is a bald, middle-aged, white man, but that’s my problem, not yours. God or Good can be whatever you need it to be in this exercise. Talk to me tomorrow and maybe Good (or God) will sound more like Gabby Bernstein or Oprah. But back to the matter at hand.
Like my imagined bootcamp, I think faith is about stripping us down to nothing and taking everything away in order to build us back up into creatures who actually believe. And, unfortunately, I don’t think it can be done any other way either. There’s a reason why people in the faith communities, particularly those dedicated to recovery, love watching newcomers and the born again show up full of hope and elation and nascent faith. The veterans probably love watching the noobs get stripped down to nothing, fall through the broken, busted up scaffolding that was holding up the remnants of their life, hit rock bottom, and have to crawl back out again. They love watching it because they know how good it feels to get to the actual other side, where real faith is about complete surrender to a higher power.
No one tells you that just when you’ve arrived at a willingness to believe, that’s when the BLEEP really hits the fan. Good (or God) likes to test us right out of the gate, answering prayers and then dashing them, to see if we really are willing to keep the faith or if we’re going to throw it away like yesterday’s latest toy.
I have seen the wisdom and delight in old timers’ eyes in recovery rooms. I have seen the twinkle in the eye of a veteran believer. And as I build faith, my own acceptance and sense of humor about this process has grown. I showed up willing to do whatever it takes to have faith a little over two years ago, and BLEEP me, this BLEEP is hard. All my prayers have been answered and half of them have been taken away again, which, I will be honest, feels like a big fat test of my faith that I am pretty bitter about, but I am so committed to this exercise that I fundamentally believe all that pain is part of the process.
I actually do believe that the hardships that I have encountered served a purpose in this journey in faith. I believe there were signs I missed, sent by Good (or God) to warn me along my path, and I ignored them. I got bitten in the BLEEP by my own hubris and my own fantasies, and I’m pretty sure God (or Good) was doing the biting. Now I know better. Now I’m really paying attention. Now I’m not even praying for what I want, I’m praying for whatever God has in store for me, just as Good (or God) intended.