At the beginning of this year, I began reading a new blog, Kathryn's Just Daily Living. I had two really big goals, to lose weight and to write (at minimum, to finish my wip and to write another novel). I'm always on a hunt for inspiration and I found it in Kathryn's blogs. It was a no-brainer to ask her to share some of that inspiration with my blog readers. Thanks, Kathryn!
What Faith Teaches You by A. Kathryn Trombly
“If I can just make it through my workout today, then next week will be easier.”
When I set out to lose weight that became my mantra. I was so out of shape, and at the heaviest I’d ever been, I frankly couldn’t see much further into my future than a week at most.
I was someone who spent most of my life focused on, well, worried is more like it, what was to come and where I would be in six months or a year. This little act, unconscious as it was, would prove to be a turning point in my life.
When I stopped looking toward a future that had not happened, or may never come to pass, I began to zero in on what I was in my control today.
I could control whether I went to the gym for my workout, made a healthy meal, smiled at a stranger, spent an hour writing, or time discovering and adding things to my daily life that made my heart smile.
So that’s what I did. I focused on what I could control, and how I was living each day, and began to allow everything to unfold.
The days went by, then the weeks, and the months, and slowly I lost weight, dropped four dress sizes, started writing again, began a blog, reshaped my relationships to others and myself, broke patterns of behavior, and experienced a host of other “firsts.”
My life was changing - it had changed - and it felt so organic, so natural, that sometimes I had to stop and remind myself how far I’d come, and who and where I once had been.
As I glanced behind me, and looked through my past, (something that for many years and months I refused to acknowledge), I saw shapes and patterns to my life that reminded me of a story.
It was as though I had been cast as both the villain and the hero, and like chapters and scenes of a story, I saw how each experience, the good and the bad, fit together to create the reflection that gazed back at me in the mirror and my life.
I looked at myself, my life and all that had happened, all that I’d been through and I began to see how each event, decision I made, and emotion I felt, had led me to that precise moment in time.
I realized that even those dark ages of my life were necessary in creating the woman I was, and that even though I didn’t know it at the time, everything was always working out for me.
And that’s when I saw it.
I never meant to find it.
I was really just some young woman who wanted to lose weight and change careers.
But there it was one day, I just happened to turn my head when I saw it walking beside me.
Actually I believe it was always there, patiently waiting for that moment when I was ready to gaze upon it, and feel it within my heart.
What I found somewhere between my future and my past was…faith.
~~~~~~
If you haven’t already, I can’t tell you how you’ll be introduced to faith. I don’t know the exact moment, or events surrounding that encounter –like our journeys in life, such a meeting is uniquely your own.
But regardless of your current relationship with faith, be at peace and know that it is there right now, guiding you, teaching you - showing you, a little more about life and yourself.
Faith doesn’t say everything will be joyful, all will be good, and nothing bad will ever happen. It only tells you, “Everything will work out.”
It just won’t always tell you what that means.
Faith teaches you to trust in the story of your life. Even though you don’t know how it will end; even though you don’t know what you will find on the next page or chapter; even thought you don’t know which new characters will be introduced, while others taken away.
Faith just whispers to you to trust - in your self, in the wonder of the universe, and in the unknown mystery of a higher power.
Faith wants you to believe in your self, your instincts, your intuition, your heart, your mind, and your spirit.
Faith teaches you to believe in it, because it believes in you.
It holds your hand while showing you that life is more than you’ll ever fully understand, or know. But that this place, this experience, the people you meet, the things you do, all that you are, and will become…is amazing.
To walk with faith doesn’t mean that you’ll be without doubt.
This week in fact, I battled and struggled through my own moments of uncertainty. Wondering if I should just pack all my bags, resign from my day-job and drive west.
I questioned all that was around me, all that I was and the direction I’ve been walking.
Life, and some moments, continue to bring me to my knees, and I cry out feeling incredibly lost.
But faith has shown me that it never gets angry, or annoyed when that doubt creeps in.
No, even when an experience, a moment, leaves you feeling broken, shattered in a million pieces and utterly alone, faith is there kneeling beside you whispering that it will be okay.
Because whether you are aware of its presence, want it beside you or try your best to shut it out, faith can, and will, never leave you.
Even when you curse its name, when you cry tears of frustration and your heart aches, faith is there to cradle you while quietly assuring that everything will be okay.
And it is within those moments that faith reminds you, that you need not know the answers to your questions, nor the road to your future.
Because you cannot know what lies ahead on your journey through life. The book of your life does not rest before you so that you can flip through it, skipping to the end and reading the final pages before jumping back to the middle.
You cannot know what next year will bring, next month, next week or even tomorrow, so faith teaches you to focus on how you are living your life today ~ in this moment.
But with faith walking beside you, know that today you are exactly where and who you are supposed to be, and that every choice, and every road you take will lead you to the same destination.
Let faith help you to understand, and accept, that all roads lead to you.
~
Kathryn Trombly writes about life how you awaken to it, how it changes as you grow, how you navigate the twists & turns, and how you love who and where you are today at Just Daily Living. As she slowly becomes comfortable in the uncomfortable, and excited about the unknown, she wants to help others learn to listen to the song in their hearts ~ one day at a time.
Photo courtesy of A Perfect Heart
Posts
1 comment:
Very beautiful Kathryn. I agree that faith seems to be a capacity, like reason or imagination, like creativity--something that is a sort of voice or presence that helps to tie the loose threads of life together into a story filled with meaning and purpose.
Some would use the term God or Jesus to describe that presence, but it is surely faith that connects us to it. I think what is important is that you have a connection and let that connection grow and nourish you.
Post a Comment