It was recently brought to my attention that I hold a lot of faith. I’m not religious, but I have faith in people, in life, and just in general. I called myself a “highly sensitive intuitive empath” in an earlier post. My faith comes from my intuition. I believe in the best of things, I feel the energy of my connections, and I have a sense of “knowing” that goes beyond what seems “normal.” I trust instinctively, something that hurts me a lot, but I won’t stop. I love freely; I will support any person – I will try to understand them and see their perspective. I believe in them; I believe in everyone. I think we’re all good inside, but that sometimes we need to be reminded of our goodness to cultivate it within ourselves.

I seek out the goodness in everyone. There is no person in this life that I believe is all bad. I have faith in people. Even the most corrupt person has a backstory – and I would bet there’s a part of them that is good. Perhaps it hasn’t come out in a while, but I believe it is there. This perception does cause me pain at times. However, I truly believe that seeing and cultivating the best in people is worth it. Even in the disappointment, I know that I gave my best self to the interaction. To me, that’s the best I can do. I cannot make someone else believe in themselves or cultivate their goodness, but I can believe in them; I can put my faith in them. So, I do.

I honestly attribute my accomplishments to a level of faith. I believe I can, and so I do. I know I’ve done hard things, so I keep doing hard things. I have faith that I can complete those things, so I put in the work until I do them. I open myself to things because I have a natural faith that everything I do leads me somewhere meaningful. Everything I do teaches me something, helps me grow. So, I follow my intuition wherever it leads, and no matter how hurt I get along the way, I keep faith that there is an end. All I can do is invest in the work to go in the directions I want to go, and put some trust into the work. Do what I can, and put some faith in the fact that I am doing my best, so it can only get better as long as I do my best.

I struggle a lot with the concept of God, but I do feel an interconnectedness in the universe that has meaning to me. My belief in people and myself supports a faith in the universe. When I look at the state of the world, it’s incredibly heartbreaking – in a lot of ways. However, people are growing in new ways emotionally and mentally. A lot of people are growing and changing how they present in this world. To me, that means there is still movement towards goodness in a collective way. We are unburdening people, we are supporting people, and we are finding new ways to coexist in this world. Not everything is going well, but there is movement towards growth. Just like my own life path, there are ups and downs, there are problems, and there are mistakes. But also: there is growth. I put my faith in that.

My story this week is about religious faith.

I was raised secular. So, I have experienced a lot of judgement and rejection based on my views religiously. It’s a triggering topic for me, which I navigate cautiously. I have many friends that are atheist, but very few who are openly religious. I live in a weird spiritual realm where I often feel uncomfortable talking about religion with either group. Atheists often wonder why I have any faith and religious folks often seem very binary in their views of what is acceptable in faith. Neither is compatible with my personal views.

My atheist friends have a hard rule about dating people: they don’t date religious people. I sometimes feel that way myself because the concept of God was a contentious issue in my second marriage. Honestly, it was contentious in both marriages, but one husband was atheist and the other one was Catholic. I’m always somewhere in the middle, and no one seems to like that. I don’t claim to be atheist because I find atheists to be overtly critical and disrespectful of religion. I prefer to stay neutral about what is “right” because I see religion as a subjective choice – so there is no right or wrong answer – just an individual’s answer. I’m pro-religious-choice, I strongly support freedom of religion and as a result I do not feel that my beliefs need to be held by anyone else. However, in both my marriages, I felt that my partners judged me because I held different beliefs – so perhaps I need to implement a similar rule…

My child brought up God recently. They asked me a lot of questions about God, Jesus, and Moses. Some I could answer because I studied several religions as part of my ethics minor, but some I could not – because I am not Christian or Catholic… or anything else. Because of my personal beliefs about religion, I made a parenting choice that reflects my beliefs also. We have joint decision-making on religion, so if their dad is going to take them to church and teach them his religion – I can share my beliefs also.

This is roughly what I shared with my child: People have many different religious beliefs in this world. Mom does not believe in the stories of God and Jesus, but she does have her own beliefs. Someday, you will get to choose what you believe. It doesn’t have to be what I believe or what your dad believes; you get to choose what you want to believe. I will support your choice.

No matter what type of faith you have, I hope you have faith in something. My faith is not religious, so please understand that yours doesn’t need to be, either. Faith is what keeps us going when we feel like giving up, and I hope you keep going.

Love, -S.