Sometimes faith is a difficult thing to come by. That and the willpower not to drop my PC in the nearest river and call it quits. At times I find myself missing the ‘child-like’ strength of faith in the ‘calling’ of my work that I used to have. I find myself having a nostalgic memory of feeling everything I was doing was ‘right,’ whether it was creating my books, writing my theories, or coaching. If I’m honest, most of these are selective memories – all of those things have always taken a great deal of energy! Yet, I find myself ‘having one of those days.’ You know the kind, when a good strong hold of doubt on a particular day grows to a global level of self-questioning leaving you feeling like it’s been ‘one of those months!
Now doubt is not unfamiliar to me, as I’m sure it isn’t to many of us. Usually I read a passage from a book that gives me a lift, watch an inspirational, just something to give me a little pick me up so that I can finish my blog, pull out the pencils and crayons to write or illustrate, get my tired butt out of a car and onto a trail for my run, or even just be a positive presence for the people I love and care about. Well today nothing from my regular bag of mental/emotional tools is cutting it, and I can feel that downward spiral of the rabbit hole. That sinking feeling where my mental emotional gremlins pull me farther into my own self-doubts until a loss of faith in myself and what I’m doing is inevitable. “Maybe this is all for naught.” My negative gremlins gnash their teeth, making their way through the crevices of my mind.
I realize that if this goes on for too long, I usually end up stopping what I am doing (which only allows those gremlins further infiltration). I decide to look someone up on-line. Someone new. Someone I am sure would fill me with inspiration. Someone I am sure has held their spiritual ‘line’ their whole life, and never doubted what they were doing for a single minute. Mother Theresa.
Yes! With a quick few clicks on the keyboard, I had Googled a site talking about a new memoir coming out called “Mother Teresa: Be my light.” Wow, I thought. This should do the trick.
Unfortunately, as I read into the article, I began to see that Mother Teresa was busy having doubts of her own. “The stunning revelations contained in a new book, which shows that Mother Teresa doubted God’s existence, will delight her detractors and confuse her admirers.” Not a good start, I thought to myself. “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss,” she wrote in 1959, “of God not wanting me – of God not being God – of God not existing.” As I read further (can’t believe I was still reading): “According to the book, this inner turmoil was known by only a handful of her closest colleagues, and lasted until her death in 1997.”
It was like a punch to the gut. Where was this indomitable, super human, woman I was ready to put the “S” cape on, and watch fly around helping the poor? That was the image of the person I was needing! I was just about to give up on my Sister Super Hero, when I read the following –
“In 1946, Mother Teresa, then 36, was hard at work in a girl’s school in Calcutta when she fell ill. On a train ride en route to some rest in Darjeeling, she had heard what she would later call a “voice” asking her to work with the poorest of the poor, and experienced a profound sense of God’s presence.”
That doesn’t make sense. That was 1946. She died in 1997. She had all of this doubt, all of this horrible despair in the depths of her soul. Yet her faith, the faith that she experienced for only a glimmer of a moment, carried her to the work of an entire church, to help countless impoverished people, and affect generations to come afterwards? Imagine actually hearing God telling you what direction to go in… you should be all set, right? The problem was she never heard His voice again. She did ALL of her work throughout her life, being of exceptional service to others with only the memory of what it felt like to have God speak to her. That insulin shot of faith lasted her the rest of her life while she was the living example of faith in works.
Processing this dichotomy from the good mother shed new light for me on what it means to have ‘faith in works’. I would imagine every person she helped, brought her that much closer to that moment in time where she felt that overwhelming sense of Faith. We are all human, and self-doubt, no matter how profound a moment in time may be for us, is still just a ‘moment’ that cannot repeat itself as frequently (if at all) as our work must. As human beings, most of our best work, our most potent work for ourselves and others, comes when we are also carrying our biggest ball of doubt. Fear of the unknown can be an incredible motivator to find answers and stimulate our own actions.
Although my faith is still present, it moves more like a current under the ocean, rather than the powerful waves that crash into and envelop all that I did in years past. I still see moments when it pushes through to the surface and surprises me. It’s usually when I am putting my faith to work doing things that helps others. In an opinion piece from the New York Times, writer James Martin wrote, “A Saint’s Dark Night… all about the doubt that mother Teresa had most of her life except for one brief moment when she heard God.” It wasn’t the majestic moment that defined Mother Teresa to me. It was that she carried that big ball of doubt with her the entire time she worked tirelessly to help the most impoverished, untouchable people in the world… and did it anyway.
So, I clicked off the internet, went back to my work, and decided that my computer gets to live yet ‘another day’. I’ve finished my blog and returned to planning and honing my next Changing Your Weather workshop. It would be wonderful if a boat load of faith and inspiration followed me, but now I realize it’s not mandatory. I’m happy to have learned that there are others who have questioned their faith, and still followed through with what they needed to do. My work is important, and regardless of whether I see God’s face, or trumpets blowing in the background at my next workshop… I’m going to do it anyway.
