Keeping Faith

What an extraordinary thing faith is. When everything is going your way, when you feel on top of the world, it’s easy to keep faith. But what do you do when your world comes crashing down around you? How do you keep faith as you watch the fabric of your life unravel?

For me, faith is my trust in the rightness of the world. Trust that people will act with good intention. Trust that in the end, life will work out in the best possible way, even when I’m not understanding why I’m facing the challenges I currently have. Trust that when a door closes, a window will open somewhere else. Trust that life will be good again.

Today, finding that trust is especially challenging for me … I trusted a bureaucrat to know what he was talking about (mistake #1). I made the mistake of not verifying all the details myself. Now that a deal has fallen through that I was counting on, I am feeling bereft. I am struggling to regain the trust, the faith, which will carry me through another tough period of uncertainty and worry as I watch the unraveling of my life.

I have had one friend write to me that she is praying for the knitting up of my unraveling sleeve of life. Another friend wrote that I was just building a new pattern of stitches, and yet another that I would have a beautiful new quilt to comfort me when I am done. I struggle once again to regain my already shaken equilibrium, wrack my rattled and severely bruised brain to think about how I can recover from one more deep disappointment and still stay sane for my daughters. It would be much easier to dissolve into a puddle of tears, crawl into bed, and not come out for a few weeks.

That question of faith is especially on my mind this week, because I think I may have lost it all. It’s frightening to watch my slow descent into the pits of despair. I don’t like it here, I don’t like the feeling of not knowing whether I can succeed in life, I don’t like the shaken self-confidence I’m experiencing, and I’m not certain how to pull myself out this time.

At the same time, I am painfully aware that I am a single mom, that I have three beautiful daughters depending on me, and I can’t just give up. I have to find a way to crawl out of this pit, and rebuild a life for myself. There must surely be the right job out there for me; there must surely be someone who is willing to take a risk on me, even without relevant experience. There must surely be a place where I can share my gifts, and find healing in the capability to help others.

I find, when it comes right down to the broken fingernails and dirt- and tear-streaked face, as I claw my way out of my pit, that my faith has to come from within. I must remember my faith in myself – I am strong, I am creative, I am an amazing person, I am worthy. And when I can remember that faith in myself, I will once again be able to trust in the world as an essentially good place. I will be able to find the good in others, I will be able to forgive the humanity, complete with failures and incompetencies and foibles, of the people who have let me down. I will be able to give back to the greater good in humanity, to share of myself in the essential ways that make me who I am. I will find wholeness again.

A friend asked me, a few weeks ago, whether I sent out my cosmic request. I had to stop and think about it, and realized, perhaps not. I’m so uncertain about how to proceed, with my life falling down around me, that I’m paralyzed with indecision, fraught with fear of making the wrong choice, bested by my deteriorating self-confidence. I thought long and hard about what it was that I wanted next from life. Do I want a new challenge that will fill me with joie de vivre? Do I want to settle for enough money and time to be a good parent to my girls? Do I want to hold out for a combination of both?

My answer, after hours and days of deliberating, was my cosmic request. Here it is, pay attention universe. I’m expecting delivery, as soon as possible!

My request is for life work that will complete me, for a relationship that will be healthy and loving, and for financial security, while I’m at it, just in case the work that completes my soul pays shit.