How we get over

These days, I believe it takes courage to share openly about the role that spirituality or faith in a divine power plays in our lives.

When new friends or public figures do so, I welcome their stories with curiosity and intrigue. I find them useful, helpful and supportive — like rays of warm light piercing through a world so shrouded in darkness and fear.

I don’t subscribe to any particular religion, nor am I seeking to. I have never been drawn to strict dogmas. Instead, I enjoy learning from many religions and faiths. I revel in seeing what’s the same, not what’s different. It always seems there is much more than unites than divides.

My belief in a divine force, or God, is not something I really name, or say out loud. But it is something that is very important to me.

Until recently it’s been only an inner and private experience. Speaking about my belief in God to anyone, even friends, was something I felt uncomfortable doing.

Yet I’ve recently realized that that discomfort comes not from a lack of desire, but from an absence of vocabulary and practice. A similar feeling came when I went back to therapy in my 30s, and discovered I didn’t have the words to speak about a decade of new emotions and experiences.

So I’ve decided to try, because it’s the only way to get better. Maybe my blog’s a good place to start, for I would love this to become a conversation. I welcome more words about faith, love, light and peace. I would love to have more dialogue centering around how we lift ourselves up.

Being able to foster within myself a sense of feeling held, supported, safe, not alone… in the hands of God… has helped me through some hard times.

Yet ironically, despite that being consistently the case, turning to God is not usually the first step I take. Nor the second or third.

But thankfully, I’m noticing a pattern.

You know how when you’re looking for your lost keys or a cooking ingredient —and you always find them in the last place you look — because, after all, once you find them, you stop looking. What makes these experiences different from one another is not that where you stop is different (for we often find the missing thing in the same “wrong” place) — but instead, the searches differ based on how many places and how long it takes before you reach that last place where you find the thing.

The pattern I’ve started to notice is that turning towards a higher power was consistently, without fail, the last place I looked for solace, safety, a knowing. There I’d feel better. There I’d stop looking.

So what has started to change is that I often remember to look there first. I try to remember to think about God sooner. And sometimes, though not always, it is the last place I look. And there I can stay, looking, singing, crying, being.

And slowly, slowly, from there, things start to change.