Faith and fear are the two motivating forces which shade our daily decisions. We always have the opportunity to choose how we perceive our reality and thus our resulting moods even when we don’t realize this. We are always deciding if we need to fear the situation or let it be OK whatever happens. We think we can control more than we do but, barring unseen tragedies and disasters, it’s only up to us to decide if our now is good or bad. If we choose to see good, we probably trust our surroundings and ourselves. If we feel fear, we don’t.
I had no real model for faith growing up. My parents we atheists and I claimed agnosticism as my chosen faith model although I was open to possibilities. Then, as I aged, I suddenly decided it was unwise to not believe in the miracles of the Universe and I opened up to the concept of a force greater than myself as a way to make sense of everything and experience awe.
But I found that not only did I have Faith issues, I had trust issues too. My family hadn’t been close knit and I had a hard time creating intimate trustworthy relationships with others as well as myself. Our church’s pastor offered that faith is a three legged stool we are seated on.
One leg of the stool is our trust in ourselves. Do we believe we are reliable to take care of that which needs doing? Do we believe we are capable of doing the hard things? The moment we can’t rely on just ourselves, we turn elsewhere. I believe strongly in or need to develop trust to battle fear and anxiety, I wrote a piece titled Seven Methods to Help Develop Self-Trust.
The second and third legs on our grounding stool are our community and our higher power. When one fail us, we have the others to fall back on. And I guess we trust that all of them are there for us to use.
The only way to move forward in life is to believe that the your fears are beatable and surmountable. To have the belief that life is for you and not against you. That if you were to ask for assistance or help in several ways, you would be offered it. That in the end you mean something to the world enough to tell the fear thoughts to suck it and go for the gusto that faith gives you.
I believe we are standing on one side of this line or the other. And I believe I just crossed over into Faith.
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1 Comment
Crossing over into faith. This is an evocative post, Shaylagh. I grew up in a family that went to church but by the time I was twelve most of the details of organized religion didn’t make any sense to me. But I’ve always believed there was something more out there and that belief has grown stronger as I’ve grown older. I guess I, too, crossed over into faith. Just not an orthodox faith.