The Path of Love

Faith and Love

Lisa Campion

I don’t know about you guys but my life has been pretty weird lately.  Granted, life is always so strange, but this year has been weirder then most for me.  I am in the midst of a lot of changes and some pretty deep ones that affect the foundations of my life and my family dynamics.

A new relationship has entered my life, I changed my office and moved the Energy Medicine School that I work in.  In some ways those changes have affected the very foundation of how I work.  To top that off, I’m in the midst of typical “sandwich generation” drama, squished between high maintenance teens and aging parents.

Yikes.

And I am not even going to get into all the weird things that are happening in the world on top of all of that.

All of this has left me feeling fundamentally shaky on some level, unable to feel my way through my future despite the fact that I am a psychic and seeing the future is my stock in trade.  Lately, I have been experiencing this shakiness as a weird wobble in the soft part of my belly that is hard for me put my finger on or even to really explain.

I think it is a fundamental fear of the unknown, coupled with a background level of anxiety, based on the fact that I really just do not know what is going to happen next.  Strange territory for a psychic actually.  I was thinking just the other the day that, when I was younger, it felt like my life was on a track that would spool out in front of me in a fairly predictable way.  In those days I felt so much Faith that I actually wanted to become a minister.

These days, however, my life has a much wilder aspect to it, like anything could happen next in my little world – and the larger one too.  It makes my belly wobble just thinking about it.

When I feel like this, when fear and anxiety give me that belly wobble, I realize that I have one spot of comfort that I can lean into, and that is FAITH.  I have always known that It is the antidote to fear.  Fortunately for me, I am naturally blessed with a good dose of It.

While I feel Faith as a warm certainty in my heart.  I recognize it as a feeling, not something that I rationalize with my mind, since Faith actually makes no sense at all.

When I was younger, I experienced Faith as trusting that, even though I couldn’t see the reasons behind things, I knew that there was a pattern behind their randomness.  And I always trusted that, at some level, the pattern was truly benevolent.  God clearly knew what was going on even if I didn’t.  And I so didn’t. This youthful Faith was a bit of blind trust, for sure, but it was very comforting in a pink, fluffy bunny kind of way, like a child trusting and believing in the wisdom of a parent.

These days, faith is a much different thing to me.  I have far less belief that things will just “work out,” and that’s probably for the best.  In fact though, I am pretty sure things are going to go haywire just as often as they don’t.  Maybe there is a reason, or, maybe the pattern is just chaos.  My blind faith changed into a different feeling and, just the other day, I realized that that feeling is LOVE.

Yes, Love.  While Faith is deeply rooted in my heart, I know that things are going to change and that sometimes those changes will be wonderful and sometimes they will just suck.  People die, economies collapse, states change colors from red to blue and, perhaps somewhere, an experimental drug will turn Ebola patients into zombies.  (You knew I was going the slip zombies into the mix somewhere, right?)

Is there any sense to the pattern?  Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.  And if there is, then I am way too small a blip on the cosmic radar to understand the pattern myself.  But I do have Faith, no matter what happens next, that I can meet it with Love and with my heart wide open to Love’s strength.  The world may just basically be whacked, but I can continue to show up with Love, meeting each challenge along the way in that state.

Just this week I am dealing with a challenging situation with my 18 year old son.  We set boundaries.  He rebels.  It’s all very natural for his developmental stage, but very painful for the rest of us.  And yet I have Faith that leaning into and trying to work things through with him is the right thing to do.  We have had many tearful, painful conversations, each of them important, working through the deeper issues.

I could just fluff it off and put it with it until he ships off to the Marines in eight months, but I believe in Love, so I use my Faith and my belief in Love to comfort myself, and him, as we deal with these difficult things.  I have Faith in the power of Love to bring us all closer as we lean into our issues rather then away from them.  I have no idea if it will work or not, and my inner belly wobble is there in full force as I jump into that gap.

There is always a chance that my Love gambit won’t work and that my Faith is misplaced.  It could be that my son ends up going into therapy as an adult and complains to his therapist that he has PTSD from our parenting techniques.

“God, I can’t believe my parents made me TALK about our issues and deal with them upfront.  It was torture!  Why couldn’t they have just practiced denial like everyone else’s parents!”

It is my faith in Love that strengthens my resolve and belief that this work with him, as difficult as it is now, will pay off for all of us later.  So I keep my heart open.  I pray.  I ask God for help when I don’t know how to parent this strong young man.  And I choose to continue to believe that Love is the most powerful force in the Universe.