A Struggle With Faith

I have heard the saying before that we should never have regrets because at one time or another whatever it is that we regret - was exactly what we wanted. While this makes sense....we still have regrets...some of us more then others. Maybe regret is a strong word.....we have....second guesses. We reach a point in our lives and wonder if a choice that we made was the right one or the wrong one. Sometimes we have days where we dwell on these choices.

One such choice for me is my decision to leave the seminary. Every Saturday night I go to Mass at 4 o'clock at the Franciscan Chapel downtown. Every saturday at about 4:30 I wonder if I made the right choice in leaving seminary. I can;t help but sit there and realize that had I stayed, today I would be a priest. I think about how different my life would be. I essentially would not be the person that I am today.

Sometimes I think about relationships that have come and gone...or I should say the relationships that have come and gone....and yet somehow stayed. I think about how some people got a chunk of my heart and for whatever reason I cant let them go. How do we let people do this to us? Or I should say how do I let people do this to me...From friendships that fell apart, to lovers who no longer grace our beds with thier presence, or our lips with their kiss. In my life it seems like there are so many loose ends. So many things left unsaid, so many sentiments left un-expressed that I will perhaps take to my grave buried deep in my heart.

Certainly we all have such feelings, such thoughts. Certainly the most important lesson we can learn in life is that in a way our best teacher is ourselves. We learn from our mistakes, from our stupid choices, and try to make the best of life. It struck me as I was leaving Mass this weekend...I sat there and begged God to answer so many prayers, and as I looked around I saw the faces of so many fellow faithful believers. Across the globe people sit everyday in faith and beg an unseen God to save them from their misery, to lighten their load, to extend even the slightest ray of grace into their lives. And why not??? It's only fair, this mystterious unseen God is the one who put us in this predicament to begin with...it's only fair that He extend a helping hand once in a while. Or that He drop a clue as to what the answer is. It's only fair that we expect Him to give us a hint as to how we would be best suited to live our lives, what He expects of us. It's only fair for us to expect that He will open the doors for us that need to be opened, or that He will have the decency to provide us with the means to improve our lives.

One would naturally then wonder too, why would He allow so many un-said sentiments, so many second guesses, and so many temptations to regret. Why does He make life so damn difficult. Some Philosophers over time have answered this question by saying that what makes it so difficult is that we are living life under the presumption that such a Diety even exists to begin with. That I cannot except. This is because He does make Himself known on occassion. For example I cannot tell you how many times I have NEEDED something, and He provided - but not an inch more. For example, the time I was dead broke, and needed to make 87 dollars to have my phone turned back on, don't you know that night at work I made EXACTLY 87 dollars. In moments of desperation He has provided the comfort I needed to get through THAT situation, and not an ounce of extra hope.

Thankfully I have been blessed with many friends who have been so good to me, weather it be providing a kind word, a listening ear, a roof over my head, a drink (lol), or just the good and happy memories of time shared together. All of this however does not satisfy that longing for more, that natural longing that we all have. Nor does it quench the frustration that comes with that longing. It doesn't heal the anger felt towards those who had a moral obligation to love us but didn't. t doesn't heal the pain that we feel when we let someone in, when we let someone love us and then we are rejected. It doesn't heal the frustration over opportunities for love, or success, or happiness that we rejected.

It is said that Love is "giving someone the ABILITY to destroy you, but trusting them not to." A truer thing has never been said. That is somewhat the definition of Faith too. That's why it hurts so much when we TRUELY love someone, and it is not mutual, or when we get screwed over at work, or when things don't work out the way we want. That's why we get that feeling in the pit of our stomaches when we get a rejection letter from a job we really wanted. That's why when a family member insults us, it burns so deep inside. That's why we have a crises in faith when God seemingly doesn't answer our prayers...or worse yet when He DOES answer our prayers, but the answer is "no". Whenever anything in our lives involve passion we fall into those words that define Love. Weather it be relationships, family, work, careers, anything....Anytime we have any kind of passion towards something we give it the ABILITY to destroy us, but we trust it not to. Then, once it has destroyed us, the doubt comes, the regret, etc etc.

Philosophers for centuries have asked this very same question, but we move forward with hope and faith, both in God, and in ourselves. Hope and faith that someday we will get it right. The life of faith is one filled with despair in so many ways. Saint Teresa of Avila once said of God, "If this is how you treat all your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them." Maybe a relationship with God is just like relationships here on Earth. There are people in our lives who for whatever reason we love more then words can ever express.....and we continue to love them because we know deep down inside that someday everything will work out as it should, and all the questions will be answered. All the doubt will be reconciled. All the unsaid things will be said. All the un-expressed sentiments will be expressed.

So much of our lives is based on hope. Hope being that blind, unproven, unseen trust that things will fall into place. We have hope that the economy will improve, that our lives will someday reach the goals we have set for ourselves, and so forth and so on. It's just that somedays we get tired of waiting.