view the print(The following piece is a part of a series of essays and poems that inspired paintings by the same title.)
If I could have any wish come true, it wouldn’t be for a skinnier body or a younger face. I wouldn’t wish for a better boyfriend or more money or a quicker intelligence. My wish would be for more faith.
I practice my faith with prayer and words. I go to God everyday with my joys and my sorrows. I expect a lot from him when I am praying and I know, at that moment, He can deliver. But, too often when I am going about my daily life, I behave as if I had no faith at all--afraid that my life will not work out right, fearful of the dark and the unknown. If I am not careful, I can be caught in a mire of doubt and fear about what the day will bring, that saps the joy from the best day. If I am not careful, I will miss the good that is always given.
Why is that? Why can’t I just let go and trust. I don’t exactly know.
When I look at my life in the moment, it is often impossible for me to imagine how everything will work out. I don’t feel like I am on a path but more like I am lost in the middle of field of high grass with no path in sight.
But when I look back at my life, it is so obvious that my feet have never left the path, and that the light has always shown me the way. When I look back, I can see the synchronicity of God’s hand. I can see that every thing has always worked together for good. I can see that even when things turned out badly or not as I had hoped or planned, they still were for the good. They still worked out in just the right way. Even the worst moment strengthened me and taught me and brought me closer to God. And when I realize this, I realize how useless and harmful all that worrying and fear was. I realize that it only served to lose me in myself and separate me from God.
How would my life be different if I were to just stop being afraid? What if I just made the choice to give up fear altogether? What if I never spent one more second worrying about what was going to happen next? What if I just did my work with the faith that everything is happening according to a divine plan, and a knowing that I am not the source of that plan?
In so many things I have unquestionable faith. When I turn on the water faucet, I never worry that water will not flow out. It always has, and so, I don’t even have a thought to question it. When I wake up in the morning, I never worry that when I open my eyes, the daylight might not arrive. It always has, so I don’t ever question it.
So why is it when the going gets rough, I have such a hard time remembering that God never fails. That everything has happened in a way that was best with God right there. I want to experience every day with the same certainty that what is, should be and that what should be, will be. I want every moment to be lived with the same faith that I have when I do something as simple as turning on the water faucet. No questions. No worried thoughts. Just faith.
It is my choice to worry and be afraid. This I do know. When I am wracked with fear and worry, I am choosing to be that way. I am choosing to see the half-empty glass. I am choosing to live in my own ego. I am choosing to believe that somehow I am the source, or I am the one in control.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m not saying you don’t have to do your part, because you do. You can’t be traveling down you highest and best path without wearing out your shoes. I’m just saying I want to do it with faith, relying on God, and not with fear from relying on myself.
I have never been forsaken. I have always been in the care of God. I have wasted so much time and energy and happiness on the fear that comes from my own mind. What an unnecessary burden and waste of life. What a waste of joy. What a waste of resources. What a waste of infinite love.
There is a plan and purpose for us all. God is always working this plan. We have infinite proof when we look back at the path that has brought us to this moment. I want to be able to know this as clearly right now, as I live through this very moment and the next, as I know it when I look back. I want to live each moment without any fear that I will go to the faucet and the water will be gone. I want to live in the present and in the knowledge that the source is infinite, and it is impossible to turn on God and not find him there.
I want to walk daily in the knowledge that “the miracle is this—everything I think I lack, is in me now”.