The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust
A part of growth is looking at the same world with a new perspective. As I look at my world I am trying to do so with a different view point. Thinking about the growing process I have been under recently I wonder if my eyes are really open. I feel like I keep making the same mistakes and not making progress. But maybe that’s what I am supposed to be feeling just before a revelation or an epiphany hits me and a major change occurs. Or maybe I’m still just the same spiritually-stupid person I’ve always been and am stuck.
Case in point, the same mistake I made 25 years ago I made again recently. Trusting that God would take care of an issue that I got myself into because of my money mismanagement. I still don’t know when to blindly trust God and when to trust myself. When does trusting myself become hubris? When will I learn to stop making rash decisions about things of faith? When will I learn that trusting God is really magical thinking? And when will I learn that it is okay to trust God with the practicalities of everyday living and that it is not magical thinking. And when will I learn or even know the difference?
I am so confused. I don’t know which way to turn and am thoroughly lost. I haven’t lost my faith or anything. I am lost as to how God plays a part in my physical world. It’s easy to trust God with the intangible but I struggle with the tangible. All the previous times I’ve prayed for something real and I didn’t get the answer I wanted plays a big part in this confusion. Sometimes I feel that God just sits up there in His heaven on His throne and looks down on me, shaking his head and is disappointed in my lack of growth. My faith is different than my feelings. Feelings are transient, up one day, down the next, fickle like my cats over their food. But my faith is a constant.
And as a constant I believe that God loves me, wants to work for me and patiently and lovingly waits for me to figure it out. For whatever reason physical manifestations are not for me, or at least they haven’t been in the past. So I must learn to trust God with the tangible things making sure I don’t use magical thinking. It is a conundrum.
Faith is different and separate from feelings. It is good to remember that. Faith is what sustains me when my feelings toward God are not good. Faith is what holds me together when I get mad at God and rail at Him. Faith is what reminds me in my darkest hour that God loves me and cares for me and will be there to catch me when I fall. Faith is what brings comfort to me in a confusing world.
Pearls of the Spirit 