I’ve spent the weekend watching my church’s Bi-Annual General Conference and my heart is just so full. I love listening to the encouraging messages and feeling spiritually renewed.
Fun fact about me, I’ve always secretly wished my name was Faith.
I’ve always loved God and felt His presence in my life, even during difficult times. I’ve had terrifying moments that have brought me to my knees, but I’ve always found my way out of that fear, but exercising my faith.
Faith and fear cannot coexist. Faith, like light, drives out the darkness.
So many people today are operating from a space of fear. The circumstances in our world are crippling for many. In my coaching just this past week I’ve heard my clients voicing lots of fear over what the future might hold, as well as anger surrounding our current events.
Some of the thoughts I’ve observed are:
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Marriage is supposed to be…”
“I’m worried that my family will suffer.”
“People shouldn’t behave this way.”
“Why would he/ she do something like that?”
Our primitive brains are so protective. The desire to avoid discomfort is so strong, that we often generate extremely painful, unintentional thinking.
Thinking that things should be different than they are makes us miserable.
When we argue that marriage is supposed to be easy, that the world should not be in chaos, that the virus should not have spread, that my family shouldn’t suffer,…
The only result for us is to feel cheated out of what was “supposed to be.”
Why do we feel entitled to ease? What makes us believe that we should not have to experience hard things?
This definitely shows up in our relationships.
But here is the truth, when we combine our life with other human beings, we sign up for struggle.
We might not know what that struggle will be, or particularly like the class we get, but we certainly did sign up for it.
I believe with all of my heart that rather than a test, this life is a classroom.
Some people have the classroom, Cancer. Some have the classroom of disability, loss, or children who suffer from physical or mental illness. Sometimes our classroom is a difficult marriage or financial struggle.
It’s easy to look at other people and think they somehow got to skip class, but that’s never true.
We all have our stuff and our classroom is exactly the class that we are meant to take right now.
Having faith that the class we’ve been assigned, is the work we most need to do in order to grow and evolve to our next best self, gives us power to dig deep, and find the blessing in the lesson.
If we can get ourselves to the place where we’re like, “Great, I’m all in, I can do disappointment, what else you got???” We can gain some power over it.
The pain can be processed, and the suffering becomes optional.
As our faith increases, so does our joy.
Faith and joy are both awesome emotions that drive us to act in positive ways.
My sister is a beautiful example of this. She has stage four breast cancer that has spread throughout her body… all through her organs and bones.
Yet I NEVER hear her complain or say that this isn’t the way it is supposed to be.
She has every right to feel entitled to be here to see her girls and grandbabies grow up. Yet she has no fear. Her faith allows her to accept what is, and enjoy her remaining days with sweet joy in her heart. She is such an example to me.
Our job is not to second guess God’s plan. Our job is to be patient while we wait for the blessing to reveal itself, and it always does.
Our work is to manage our thinking, -to notice when we feel fearful and weed out the thoughts that threaten our faith.
Fear of the future, fear of the pain, fear of the process, can be much more debilitating than the actual lesson itself.
Peace will come when we dive into our class and embrace the struggle.
So, be of good cheer and invite hope into your life.
Finding faith in yourself, in your husband, in your neighbors and all of humanity, will lift you and help YOU to accomplish your best work.