Lately I’ve been thinking about my faith in God and I’ve been reflecting on how I want my faith to transfer to more areas of my life. I’ve been thinking about how my faith needs to be more than just believing there is a God. It needs to be more than just believing God is good or believing I can trust in Him. It needs to be more than leaning on Him through the tough times and knowing He will get me through any and every situation I face. In the past few years, I have been on a personal journey with God and through this process my faith has been strengthened greatly. But while my faith in God has grown stronger, I’m not so sure that my faith in life, in people and in love has grown along the way. I think that now that I have a firm foundation in God it is time for me to extend and expand my faith to other areas of my life.
It’s time to have faith in the goodness of people. It’s time to have faith in the moments when I don’t have all the answers. It’s time to have faith in love and it’s time to have faith that I’m worthy of that love. It’s time to have faith in myself, knowing that I can and will make good decisions with God’s guidance. It’s time to have faith in the people around me and to believe that they want what’s best for me and that they have my best interests at heart. It’s time to have faith in the future, in all of the beautiful possibilities that lay before me. It’s time to have faith that everything really is alright and everything really will be okay, because God does have my back. God is looking out for me. God does walk alongside me and guide me. By trusting in Him, I can also trust what’s going on around me. I can take steps of faith and take risks and live my life without all of the fear, worry and anxiety.
I’ll be honest, most of my life I’ve had a hard time trusting people. I’ve been hypervigilant, on the lookout for perceived emotional danger, afraid of getting hurt, hypersensitive to loss or rejection. It’s been really hard for me to put my faith in people. And of course, I know my faith shouldn’t be completely in people, considering that we are all flawed human beings. But as much as we shouldn’t put all of our faith in people and put them on a pedestal, we also can’t go to the opposite extreme where we refuse to have faith in anyone. I used to live in that opposite extreme, and not having faith in anyone looked like me trying to control everyone and everything. I was afraid of not being able to control every outcome. At least if people were going to disappoint me, they were going to do it on my terms.
The worst part of not having faith in anyone, was that that included myself. I didn’t have faith in my value or my voice. I didn’t trust my instincts or my intuition. Without faith, I would overthink everything. I went through cycles of anxiety and rumination until I felt the need to get control by taking some impulsive action that typically left me worse off than when I started. I did not have faith in God, I did not have faith in others, and I most certainly did not have faith in myself. I am so thankful that God saved me from my own self. I am overwhelmed by his love and his mercy and how greatly He has changed me. I have learned to turn my fear, worry and anxiety over to Him. I have learned to surrender the outcome of my relationships to Him. I have learned to pray, rather than overthink. I have learned to praise, rather than ruminate.
Yes, I have learned to have faith in God, to truly leave my life in His hands and trust that He knows best. But I know that I have some work to do in the area of faith. I have been hurt by people in the past. I have opened my heart up to the wrong people. Over the years I have become narrowly focused on the negatives, on what could possibly go wrong, that I have been missing out on a lot of positives, on what could possibly go right. So today, I choose to have a faith that expands my heart. I choose to have a faith that has many dimensions. I choose to have a strong spiritual faith and to continue building on the foundation that God has set in place.
But I also choose to have faith in humanity again. I choose to believe that there are more good, kind-hearted, generous, compassionate people out there than there are evil, cold-hearted, selfish, cruel ones. I choose to have faith in love and know that there will always be enough of it. I believe that God will always surround me with enough love in my life, even if the faces change through different seasons and stages of life. I choose to have faith in life, in my life. I believe that as long as I seek God with my whole heart and take steps of faith, He will get me where I need to go. I choose to have faith in myself. I choose to honor my value and my voice, to listen to my instincts and my intuition.
You see, truly having faith in God should change my outlook on everything. As He continues to change me from the inside, how I see the situations and the people around me changes as well. I don’t have to control everything and everyone around me because I know that I can’t control every outcome in life. I know that there will be tough days ahead and that people will let me down sometimes. Worry and anxiety won’t keep bad things from happening. Ruminating and overthinking won’t make bad things better. No, all I can do is open myself up to this thing called life and hold tight to my faith, knowing that no matter what, God’s got me. And I’m learning that the more faith that inhabits my life, the more peace and love I feel. The more faith I have, the better equipped I am to deal with life just as it is. Give me the highs and the lows, the successes and the failures, the rain and the shine, the joy and the pain. For every situation, through the good, the bad, and the ugly, I have found the answer and that answer is FAITH. A faith that we all need a little more of. Not just faith in God, but faith in each other. Faith in love and goodness. Faith in humanity. Faith in all things positive. Faith in all of life’s wonderful possibilities. And faith in you, my friend, faith in beautiful you.