Fear vs Faith

We don't always know where our faith lies. Or even what it looks like. Or if it's ever enough to sustain us.

We stumble around in our meaningless existence, with our gadgets and that endless babble of apps running in the background, straining against religion.

"We are atheists!", we cry. Silently. We are not for the rigid walls of any religion, we don't subscribe to these restrictions, these violations on our freedom, these killings of our true selves.

We are young, we are invincible.

We are such strong people. We are so strong we refer to ourselves in the collective. There is no abstract idea that can break us, not words, not heartbreak, not betrayal, not fate nor any series of unfortunate events.

Except maybe something so basic and so physical as literal, unbearable pain.

And only then do we draw on our faith.

"God SURELY wouldn't give me anything I wouldn't be able to handle. For He is All-Compassionate, He is Most Merciful."

That is what my faith sounds like.

It got me through nights and nights of unthinkable pain. I would say this sentence so often that I would only fall asleep urgently whispering the words until it was louder than the pain. I said it to myself even as the doctors, with whom I discovered I had no faith, fussed over me.

You won't know where your faith lies until you are alone, and you refer to yourself singly, and you are faced with your darkest fear.

And you won't know what your darkest fear is, either, until your faith shows up.