“Who are you now?”
David Rude, MA, CPC
April 27, 2011
I struggle with faith; often more than I’d like to admit. Why can’t I trust that between my efforts, the laws of Nature and God watching over me all will work out for the best? I sometimes find myself struggling just to get motivated to go about my daily activities. Fortunately, I am usually able to catch myself before I slip too deeply into this place of doubt, impatience and frustration.
It confuses me that I can still lose faith in things. I mean after all these years, why don’t I trust that things will always work out. They always do. Sometimes I feel like I am so far off course, that I have drifted miles from my original goal. It’s hard for me to accept that an experience is good and helpful when I am late for an appointment or when I have to redo some project. But then I realize that no matter how many times my plans are interrupted or changed I somehow am still on the right course for me.
When I am able to remain open-minded and flexible I find that I can overcome most any obstacle that comes up. It’s been suggested that experience is what we get when we don’t get what we want. So, if I don’t get what I want I instead get something more valuable, I get experience. Experience, for me, is opportunity. It allows me to recognize what could be if I tried again with a different approach or a different attitude. Experience encourages growth, too.
Once we are able to trust ourselves and the world around us and practice faith we can find our way back to our goals and hopes.
We do, though, have to make a decision, to move forward. I know it’s not easy to do this because we’ll have leave the comfort of our past (yes, even the negative and yucky stuff) behind. Many of us will doubt our decision to move forward. We’ll second-guess and wonder “what if?” Moving towards your “real,” purposeful and mature goals (versus towards those easy, lazy, unhealthy ones) means work. It means giving up our childish and doubting ways. It means choosing growth which will bring you back to people whether that group is a family, a boy/girlfriend, an office setting or even a whole community. In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho describes the experience of one choosing to move back towards a healthier and more productive life. “He still had doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision is only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
Sounds good, doesn’t it? When we make the decision to move forward with our lives we are inadvertently deciding to have faith, too. The two go hand in hand. They say that “faith can move mountains.” Faith, in my life, has moved me well along my life’s path to places I never dreamed possible. Faith and a healthy outlook will restore a sense of possibility and potential to your life. When I am in this pattern of growth I am happier and healthier. I am not alone either. My connection to people is stronger as is my connection to God.
Think about who you are right now. Are your choices based on faith and growth or are they stuck in fear and unhappiness? We have lots of choices to make in our busy lives. We can choose to trust ourselves and our God, we can choose to move forward in our lives’ pursuits and we can choose to live honest and open-minded lives.
