For years I’ve shied away from any discussions on religion, ones’ beliefs, their faith. Whenever someone would bring up religion I would always sit back, zip my lips, and intently listen to their words, whilst getting lost deep in my own thought. I never realized how taboo I thought discussing one’s religion and faith was. Why, why was I so guarded and scared to open up to others about the relationship I have with my own faith?
I think of myself generally as a pretty guarded person in terms of my emotions, feelings, and inner-most-thoughts, and in my personal opinion someone’s faith, faith in general is one of the most personal things that someone can have.
Every single person you encounter has their own thoughts, their own relationship, their own experiences with their faith; whether it be with a higher power or with nothing at all.
Faith.
A five letter word, with countless definitions, but nobody quite knows what it truly means.
Yet everyone has their own interpretation of faith.
And their own experiences with how it has impacted their life.
There’s a reason why faith is such a personal thing that someone has.
Because throughout our lives our relationship with faith is constantly tested.
And having faith is hard, but keeping it is harder.
When someone passes before their time, your faith get’s tested.
When someone you thought was going to be in your life forever abandons you, your faith get’s tested.
When you pray every night for months to your higher power and nothing changes, your faith get’s tested.
I’ve personally always struggled with my own faith and from a very young age have had a love-hate relationship with it.
I was raised as a nondenominational Christian and that God, in my case, would and will always be there. Which I believed when things in my life were good. But when things in my life got rocky, when I was personally tested, I struggled with my faith and at times lost it all together.
I remember saying How, how could there be a God? How could there be a God with all this crappy shit happening in the world? With all this crappy shit happening to me? And in-light of this past tragic week in the world, my faithless self might have had a point.
But one day I realized there was more to it than just that.
This world isn’t necessarily filled with good and bad things happening. And to be honest I have absolutely no clue how I got my faith and belief in God back. I really don’t.
I think the more I dwelled on the negative and the crappy things that happen to every single goddamn person on this earth, the more I was just not happy. And one day I just really felt the need to change my outlook.
I realized that I had gone through a normal thing. When bad things happen to us in our lives, we tend to get angry, we either need to punch a wall or blame someone. In my case it was something, it was my faith.
It was okay that I had gotten angry that things had not gone the way I had wanted them to.
And at the end the day I realized I don’t know the plan that God has for me. Hell, I have no idea if there even is a plan at all, but I’d much rather go through life believing that there’s more to life than all this.
That there is an actual reason why things happen to us.
That there is an actual reason why certain people are in our lives.
That there is an actual reason why we are put through the bad things as well as the good.
That there is an actual reason to have faith.
That there is an actual reason to keep it.
A few days ago I decided to go out and get a cross tattooed on my foot, and that’s where the inspiration for this article came from...sorry mom.
