The more I doubted my faith, the more I actually came to understand what I believe.

It’s a funny paradox, and I didn’t think it could be true until I started really thinking about it. But the more I talked about belief and faith, the more I tried to figure out how to have faith and what to believe, the more I figured out what is true for me. The trick is, I was figuring it out underneath, in the depths of my dark inner pool, and I didn’t know what was going on down there until recently.

Like, yesterday.

But then, I started talking to my son about natural vs. artificial. We were discussing what makes something “man made”, and I realized (with something of a heavy heart) that the boy is becoming a scienceist. (That’s our word for someone who believes in science, but is not necessarily a scientist. We make up lots of words around here.) The conversation between us became a friendly debate about spirituality and science, and I realized that I wasn’t struggling. I wasn’t having those pangs in my heart that spoke of not knowing what to believe or what to feel or what to have faith in (or not). I was assured and quietly secure.

It was boggling.

A few days later, we made vision boards. As I started carrying the magazines to the table (and boy do I have a lot of magazines for this very thing, like, dozens), I thought to myself, I’m not going to have anything to create here. I felt so disconnected from my spirituality, so disconnected from myself, that I figured I’d wind up with a big blue expanse of poster board (my poster board is blue) with very few – if any – pictures on it.

My vision felt clouded, and what can I do with clouded vision? Not a lot, I felt. I was nervous, anxious. Terrified, even. My son dug into the magazines and immediately started snipping things out, and my lovely wife was pulling out pictures left and right, and I just sat there for a few minutes. I looked at the pile of magazines, I looked at my big blue poster board. I took a deep breath and reached for a magazine.

Two hours later, after Pace and the boy had finished their vision boards, I was still digging and snipping. I’d created a huge pile of images, all of which I resonated with deeply. I started gluing the images on the board, just to catch up with the others, but I found that I wasn’t ready for that and went back to the search. I had no idea that I’d come up with so much.

My vision wasn’t clouded, after all.

It’s not my heart that’s afraid. It’s not my spirit that’s disconnected.

It’s all in my head.

I’ve said before, I felt trapped in my head. During surgery, I wound up moving there to protect myself, because I didn’t feel safe or comfortable in my body or in my heart. I needed somewhere to go because everywhere else hurt too much.

But now, slowly, gradually, and surprisingly without my attention, I’m moving back. I’m going home. I’ve always been a heart-centered person; I’m highly sensitive, emotional, intuitive, and not very logical or reasoning. But the past few months have had me over-thinking and reasoning about everything, and being logical and talking about everything – talking everything to death, in fact, because I didn’t know what else to do. I felt disconnected from myself, and figured the only way to reconnect was to talk it out and reason my way back to connection.

Seriously?

Reason my way to connection?

Reasoning to connection is like dancing about architecture. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t even live on the same plane. I can dance about architecture until I collapse, but the building won’t get built – the blueprints won’t even be understood by anyone.

It’s not the right language.

Connection is all about love. Love.

Love transcends everything. Love was there, in my heart and in my spirit, all along. I was ignoring it, pushing it away, but it was there. It’s always there. All I had to do was remember.

And it was all I had to do. As soon as I remembered, I started feeling it. As soon as I realized that I have the answers, here, inside me, I started hearing them again. As soon as I stopped trying to reason with myself, my emotions kicked in and I started feeling my connection again. The moment I opened up, love poured through.

I’m not saying the struggle is over. I’m not saying it just magickally got easy. But a corner has been turned and I’m on the way back.

Back home.