Faith. Hope. Love. These concepts have weighed heavily on me the last little while. I’m going to attempt to do a better job with this blog than I normally do. Mainly because they are not fleeting thoughts. In fact, they weigh so heavily because they almost feel like major epiphanies being brought to my soul. It’s like a wise friend said about self revelations, “It’s like cleaning out a closet—gotta get messy before it gets all straight..gotta tear it up to put it back together.” Aside from it being important to me, I think several of my friends may be struggling as well. To just dump my usual random banter about the subjects doesn’t do the concepts or my friends justice.

Perhaps most paramount, I think Faith, Hope, & Love are intertwined. This revelation struck something inside me when I finally put it together. It’s semi-painful to share much detail—and not necessary—but here’s how things played out: I met someone and unconsciously placed hope in it developing into romance; when some unexpected twists unfolded it was revealed to me I loved him; and when I spoke to God about it, he only answered all day every day (no matter what was going through my mind), “have faith.” As it turned out, being Friend Zoned was the best thing that’s possibly ever happened in my life. He’s my closest friend and would die for me in an instant. And only afterwards did it strike me how in this instance—and so many others—a combination of faith, hope, and love made for a wonderful gift of connection—to a friend and to the universe. Having said this, it’s going to be challenging for me to outline each ingredient in clear and achievable language. Let’s be honest, this is brand new for me and I’m still figuring it all out. Please add commentary and share your experiences too.

I’d like to start with hope, because that’s where this experience started unveiling for me. Hope is like a weed—you walk in the house at 5pm one day via your freshly cut lawn. At 8am you can walk out and find a few giant weeds have sprung up overnight. Ok, maybe it takes a few days? Maybe, like me, you don’t notice it growing until its in your face obvious. I don’t know if that’s the best analogy but it’s all I have at 1am. But here’s what I have been trying to focus on internally over several months: living wholeheartedly, letting my guard down about romance and love, trusting people, seeing who they are and what their intent is, and bringing exactly who I am to the table (for better and worse, unapologetically). A big lesson I’ve seen is that hope isn’t placing expectation in someone else’s hands, it’s cultivating inside you that which will allow you to be EXACTLY who you are and loving yourself for it. In other words, my only hopes were that I break free of some personal bad habits. The hope was clearing a path inside me to be open to something more. It took some critical thinking to get —really grasp— that new take on hope. And, no matter what the outcome or someone else’s actions, I can rejoice because I got what I hoped for from myself. To really have hope, you must clean out that closet I referenced above.

When I started slowly realizing some of my self-sabotaging ways, I had not been close to God. [I won’t go into my dogma just suffice it to say I am a believer in a higher power. That’s where I come from and no, I don’t intend to convince you to believe the same as me nor should you.] That troubled me for unconventional reasons, but mainly because I find more peace within when I feel like I’m on track with the universe. As I become aware of my thoughts, I realized I really, REALLY had a tendency to want to fight the way life unfolded. It’s almost as if I had internalized “The American Dream” to the point where I believed there was nothing I cannot change. At some point I had to accept that things are just as they are and I had to draw a line inside me, constantly reminding myself, “Here are the things I have control over, here are those in which I have none.” And, I had to be content to let what I can’t control off the hook as my obligations. Not even content, I have had to learn to be grateful about it. Faith has come to be defined inside me as keeping an open line of communication to receive messages from the universe, trust the universe and seek its lessons willingly, and understand how things end are not 100% in my control. I can sit here tonight and tell you there is nothing I would change about my past because it got me right here and I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I had to stop shaming myself, understand I am enough because the divine made me exactly this way, and let go of some battles.

And the subject I know the least about—or rather, spend the least amount of time trying to understand—is love. I can’t define it and I challenge anyone who says they can. Love is the bird singing and the squirrel playing. Love is the music that moves you and the recognition you give when telling the musician thank you. I know more about what love is NOT than what it is. I do know one thing—when my hope and my faith got on track, my “issues” with love dissolved. Suddenly, love in all it’s forms swelled inside me. And I don’t have to receive love back in order to love. That bird may or may not know how I feel love when he sings. He’s probably looking for a worm to chase anyway. I do know that everyone wants to be loved and should be loved. You deserve to be who you are and loved for only that. Chasing something you are not is a sure way to escape feeling connection and love.

Be who you want to be but never sacrifice who you are for it. That’s the only way love in its many forms can get inside. And, lastly, it’s always, ALWAYS worth the risk. ~ ❤ ~