Stormy Seas and Faith

Maybe life is like waves of opportunity. Timing the waves right requires faith to jump at the right time and faith to stay fully engaged. Fear and doubt make us miss the time windows and give up too soon.

Maybe life is like many failures and missed waves. Until our learned skill and luck combine and we finally nail it.

My stormy seas make me alternatively loose my faith, and then re-find it. When you are paddling to keep your head above the waves… When you are spitting out salt water you inhaled… It is easy to loose faith and become pessimistic.

Does a history of missed or crashed waves make us more likely to fail? It would seem a history of failures can make us more likely to succeed. Because with each failure we have gained something, we have gained knowledge.

But then there is the question of endurance. Maybe life is an endurance test. Dog paddling in stormy sea’s, spitting out salt water, can definitely cause one to question whether or not their endurance will be enough.

Is it illogical to have faith in good things when it seems everything turns out bad? Maybe it is illogical to see only the bad outcomes.

Faith is hard to have in the midst of the stormy seas. But then again, the stormy seas are harder to endure without faith.

It takes courage to have faith after you almost drowned in a wave. Courage to be willing to almost drown again.

Faith would be easier to have if you knew it would work. But then again… That would not be faith would it?

Maybe winning and succeeding in life is about having faith, learning from failures, and enduring to the end.

There, I got it back around to the kindergarten standard answer. But it is not standard or simple to me.

Trauma’s wreck havoc on our belief in faith, hope and endurance.

Repeated severe traumas seems to teach us to keep our heads down, keep our true selves hidden. But it is still more complicated then that. Because for me, and for many others, our traumas were wrapped around mental manipulation. We were manipulated to have excess fear and doubt.

Faith is being willing to look past that trained fear and doubt and hope that there is something better.

When we were children under the control of our abusers the cards were stacked against us. The manipulators controlled our environment so much that succeeding & winning may of not have even been possible. It is no wonder, living in that environment where we are trained for failure…. Living in that environment where success was not possible… It is no wonder, then, that abuse survivors struggle so hard to have faith in themselves, in a world that is better.

Is the world better? That is a question that can haunt us. Have the rules changed? Now as adults, is it actually even possible for us to succeed? When we look back at our history of failures it seems doubtful.

But, if the waves have changed… And if we have more knowledge… And if we have more control over our surroundings… Then maybe.. Maybe… It may be worth taking the risk to have faith.