Sometimes Faith Is:

I have always considered myself to be an optimistic person. Someone who has faith and hope in life. However, Cataplexy brought me to my knees as my life was reduced to laying to bed, paralyzed, able to hear but not to act. Being reduced to a bed ridden, silent state ( those who know me, know I love to talk), my faith was tested. My optimism completely ran out. I wondered if I really had faith. I learned that depending on the day, and the circumstances, faith can be grandiose and amazing, or simple, and even insignificant to others.

So today, I thought I would write what I have learned about faith.

Sometimes, faith is:

* Loosing everything
* Moving away
* Accepting that you are enough
* Letting God speak to your heart
* Listening
* Waking up
* Showering even when you know you're going back into bed.
* Going out in public
* Falling down in front of people you respect
* Praying
* Trying something even when you know you've failed before
* Trying something new
* Accepting Gods will for that day
* Believing God can make something out of you
* Seeing your children grieve, and trusting God sees it too.
* Letting your husband carry you
* Letting your neighbor bring you a meal
* Feeling gratitude for the love of others
* Acknowledging the angels that are surrounding you
* Acknowledging the good in the mist of a hellish experience
* Believing you are more than your body
* Believing you are more than your mind
* Eating
* Thriving
* Giving
* Accepting
* Respecting Gods miracles and truly seeing them
* Hugging the ones you love even when it hurts.


When you are curled up in your closet at night, wondering how you can continue to move forward in your life, on those days, faith is:

* Allowing yourself to fall asleep
* Not going for the bottle, the pills, the computer, the food and just being in the uncomfortable, heart wrenching feelings
* Not taking your life
* Choosing to not get in your car and leave it all

On the mornings when you feel like you can barely move,  barley manage your own emotions, and you can hear your children talking, fighting, and laughing in the other room and you know its only minutes before they are coming in to get you. On those days, faith is:

* Removing your warm covers
* Putting  a bra on under your pajamas.
* Putting down your phone
* Addressing your dread
* Digging deep with courage to face the day
* Putting your own desires behind.
* Brushing their hair
* Pouring cold cereal and still feeling good about your ability to parent

When you are driving home from a long day at work, and your tired to the bone, On those days, faith is:
* Walking through the front door
* Embracing your children
* Listening to them
* Preparing a dinner out of your freezer but feeling like you worked hard to make it.
* Turning off your mind about the urgency of work
* Replacing your passion for your job with your passion to be a mother

When I looked out the window, and  watched my children enjoy the home we worked to build, and we were loosing because of my disease, on those days, faith was:
* Feeling gratitude
* Focusing on my children instead of my losses
* Believing that God can give and take away
* All things will be restored
* Acknowledging that I still had the only thing that truly mattered, my family.


When you are sitting in church, next to your husband and you look at all your children sitting, singing, nudging each other and acting angelic and imperfect at the same time, on those days faith is:
* Taking the sacrament
* Believing in a Savior
* Believing you can be forgiven
* Believing that life is meant to have joy
* Allowing the bread and water to work in you.
*Allowing the Lord to work through you.

And ultimately, faith is believing that, by the grace of God,  you can do it all again tomorrow.