Faith, Meaning, Spirituality

Spirituality is often defined as finding meaning and purpose in life, through values, beliefs, and connection to something larger than oneself. The “God Thing,” as someone close to me calls it, changed everything in my life.  

There is a transcendent commitment beyond myself that makes life worthwhile. Who am I when no one is watching?  Do I align in word and action to my values?  Am I acting as God would have me be? Or am I trying to run the show based on my ego, dishonesty, self-seeking or fear? Which way works out better … The one of faith or the one of no faith? 

I personally don’t get too granular trying to define “God” but there is no doubt in my mind today that having faith is as important to my well-being as my mental and physical health. My proof of something greater than myself, that God is walking with me in this life, is in every part of my story.  

I don’t believe I am unique in that I avoided facing who I really was and became lost in the striving for who I wished to become. Self-determination is not a bad thing but if it is not kept in check by something else, it becomes a bit of disaster. At least it did for me.  If I am my own higher power or I put some other person, place or thing in that role, then I make a lot of decisions that are very misaligned.  Most of us wouldn’t run a business without checks and balances, yet I find that is exactly how I ran my life without faith and it led to feelings of alienation and emptiness.  

Self-awareness is “the ability to recognize one’s own emotions, thoughts, behaviors, values, and how they influence interactions with the world. It involves understanding your inner world and how it connects to your actions and relationships.”  

That process of taking time to look inward at the experiences that shaped me was one part.  Examining it from a new angle, is where I found not only my mistakes, patterns and misaligned values but the thread of something greater than myself at work.  These moments that I had not given much thought to in the past and often overlooked as coincidence or luck came to have new meaning.  

What were all these twists and turns in my life that I had no control over?  What if I stopped trying to make everything fit together the way I wanted or the way others wanted and tried to live as God would have me be?  What if I believed in this power greater than myself and aligned my will to that something?  

In recovery that is exactly what I did.  I stopped debating, I stopped trying to control and I became open-minded to the idea that something greater than myself could have a role in my life.  Incrementally, I found my way back to a faith that works and have navigated both good things and really hard things in a balanced and meaningful way.  

With a spiritual way of living, I can see and feel grateful for everything hard and painful in my life.  As strange as that may sound, it has been the removal of the things I thought I wanted, needed, or couldn’t live without that has brought me awareness and allowed me to live a more meaningful life.

In times of doubt or emotional disturbance I try to remember that I perform for an audience of one, and that one is God. When I ask God to show me how he would have me be, I am spiritually led to solutions that always work out better than my emotionally driven ones. It feels like coming home to a place of peace when I am living in alignment with the God of my understanding.