Grief and Faith

Hi everyone,

This year, I am experimenting with an aspect of my life, which is faith. I’ve always felt a strong calling to write but been very afraid to really pursue it. When I examine this fear, I’m not sure what it’s really about. Perhaps it’s that I’m afraid my writing won’t result in anything, that it wouldn’t actually mean anything, or perhaps I’m afraid of facing myself.

It’s probably some combination of all of the above.

Therefore this year I have resolved to practice faith through writing. I dont know where this is going but I am going to do it anyway out of a faith that it could lead to something meaningful.

Faith is something I discovered during my season of grief.

Prior to experiencing loss, I felt that faith was for people that did not really see reality as it is, that it was something borne out of naïveté. I guess I would have been described as an atheist.

Ironically, through my journey with grief I now have a strong feeling that faith is all there really is, that there couldn’t be anything more real. Losing the person that was the center of my universe revealed to me that everything in this life is impermanent, that any sense of permanence and stability I had were illusions. Not in a bad way, not in an evil way, not in a sad way, just in a way that is. I realized that the only thing I really have in this lifetime is whatever is internal to me — that anything could happen to me externally but no one could take away my response to it all, my perspective, my faith.

Also, something really happens when your world and sense of self is crushed which is that if you let yourself and life as you know it be crushed and open yourself up to it, you will find that something ultimately remains. This part of you with all its soft edges, this uncrushed part, this part, the part that keeps hoping, keeps loving, keeps living, it is the best part.

People learn to survive in different ways and this was mine — embracing loss and taking a leap of faith.

Faith that it was all leading to something. Faith that something good could come out of this. Faith that there was a reason to keep going. Faith that everything would. ultimately be okay. Faith that if I picked myself up and put one foot in front of the other each day, that something new would emerge, and that this something was worth going on for.

The best way I can describe it is that it was as if I was hiking and the trail became very difficult, in a way I could never have even imagined or conceived of. I reached a point in the trail where there was no where remaining to go, but to take a step of faith. It would be as if someone asked me to walk off a cliff. It was frightening and made no sense and a part of me died in that process, but a part of me survived and lived by faith. Although I am hiking it is not with my legs anymore but my spirit as it turns out that is the only way I was able to continue the journey.

What has helped you with your journey when the trail has gotten impossibly difficult and hard?