Someday the pain will end. Someday the frustration, the agony, the struggle to make sense of it all will meet at the intersection of our limited human understanding and reality and hopefully give us peace. It’s getting through day to day that is the true challenge: when the pain, viscerally psychic or even physical blinds you to that hope of a better tomorrow.
I’ve experienced this in my life. I’ve felt the pangs of hopelessness, the disabling depression, rumination, perseveration. How do I fix this situation? How do I end this now and open my eyes and my heart fully to the belief that somehow, someday I’ll see some light again? Or the person I love will – and we’ll be made whole? What are we left with when there is no hope on the horizon?
The answer is faith. Faith and faith alone. Convincing yourself solo with a mind that’s already ablaze with anxiety and worry seldom delivers tangible results. Faith, to me, means that despite the tribulation and strife, we find a way to come back to belief. To an understanding that no matter how low things can sink for us, the possibility remains definitively that just as so, our circumstances, situations, relationships, health, and spirit can rise again. Miraculous transformations happen all around us, all the time – why is it so hard to believe the same could be true for us?
The fastest route to a new discovery of faith for me has always been community. I believe it to be the same for many others. When I don’t have the ability to see clearly, hardly the ability to even move out of my own way in my misaligned thought process, I look to others. When I got sober, a massive aspect of my newfound faith was in seeing people achieve and acquire peace of mind via 12-step and community support. Seeing others, people just like me, overcome insurmountable odds and return from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body: restored to sanity.
A kernel, a grain – that’s all it takes. When everything else is stripped away and we’re cold, feeling alone, and distraught – what better way to foster that spark of faith than through friends, community, trusted advisors or family? Others can always see in ourselves what we become so blind to. They can encourage us, stand beside us, guide us, inspire us, and hopefully, move us. Give us a reminder of who we are when hope is gone.
God will always work through others in our lives tangibly. We are the earthly extension of His power – His hands and feet here on the ground. Faith may wax and wane – it may teeter on the edge of darkness in our more troubled moments – but if through the suffering we can find strength to reach out to our brothers and sisters, to truly build an unwavering support network, to remain as open as we can to suggestion and guidance, we can yet again find faith through them.
That’s why community works. That’s how it works – and why it’s endured through time as a cornerstone of our survival and growth. With faith restored, our hope, and healing may soon follow.
Faithfully.
Sean, In Recovery
