Fake It

I've not written much about Advent thus far even though this is the Second Sunday in Advent... the Sunday of Peace. I've been sort of at a loss about what I want to say - I've said a lot of it before - it's a yearly renewal, a yearly reminder of the promise, of the gift. As I age this is what becomes the most important thing to me - the comfort I get from all this. My faith has grown tremendously over the last few years - I'd almost lost it at one time but at some point it started to push through the dark, searching for light, for warmth. It took on a brightness, a luminescence of sorts, and it brought peace and joy back into my life. I can't imagine not having faith, not believing in something more than me, something greater and grander.

I don't believe as I used to, and I 've written about that before - that's the whole point of growing in your faith... don't you think? As I've aged I realize life doesn't fit into a nice neat little box, and neither does my faith in God. It's been special and important to me to have several men of faith guiding me, encouraging my faith, but yet not telling me my doubt was right or wrong - the message received from each of them has been it's normal to doubt, to question, to wonder. My minister said to me once something like this - he said if anyone tells you he's got it all figured out then run. He said no one has the answers - no one - he said we're not supposed to have all the answers - and he said anyone who says he does is lying. There is weight that lifted off my shoulders when he said that. Life truly is the process... the journey.

There is often a lot of conversation about "faking it til you make it," especially when dealing with mental health issues. My ex said it a lot - he was faking it hoping some day he'd be making it - and I think that's just the wrong way to approach anything. Yeah I have moments I fake it (get your minds out of the gutter... it's been waaaaay too long to worry about faking that). We all have moments where we're sitting in a long school choral concert and our child's not singing and we're really not into it but we fake it for a little while - not in an effort to elicit some kind of emotion or way of living - but just to be polite... to make it through an uncomfortable situation. We don't live a life of pretend, a life contrary to our true feelings, with the hope one day we'll magically wake up and be on board with that way of life. There has to be a change inside us... a true change born from desire - a moment when need and want converge and become one - before we seek to make life what we want it to be. It's not easy, in fact, sometimes, it can be down right painful... but once it happens, once the joy begins emanating from the inside out, living it becomes second nature - it doesn't require the ability to fake it.

I was faking my life too... all those years, all that time... I was faking it too, hoping beyond hope to recapture or rekindle something that may have never been there in the first place. Now it's different for me, now I am learning to make no apologies for who I am, or what I like, or what I do. This has given me a freedom to just be, which has made life so much simplier - so much more joyful... and that, in turn, is the spark that motivates me to do, and go, and learn, and grow - and really, the ability to look around at my life and feel the blessings and know now, beyond a shadow of any doubt, they do exist - if I'm not sure of anything else I'm sure of that...