It’s relatively easy to live in faith when nothing really bad has ever happened to you. But sooner or later, all of us will experience something that seriously tests our faith. You find out that your spouse is having an affair, your house burns down and you lose everything, or you or a loved one is diagnosed with a terminal illness. And the list goes on.
These are the events that truly separate the faithful from the fearful.
Many times these painful events are actually orchestrated by the Soul to assist us in moving from fear to faith. It’s enormously helpful to realize that, on some level, everything that happens to you is designed to help your spiritual evolution. Despite the difficulties and opposition I have encountered along my path in transforming the way women see their bodies and their health, it has all been worth it. But it has taken effort. And commitment. Whether or not your life is easy has a lot to do with how you handle loss, failure, accidents, shame, conflict, and illness.
Are you going to let a loss or accident cripple you emotionally for the rest of your life? Or are you going to use it to build unshakable faith? In my book Making Life Easy: A Simple Guide to a Divinely Inspire Life (Hay House, December 2016) I explain that all painful emotions have a gift within them. Grief pulls heaviness out of us. It lightens us if we simply allow ourselves to grieve. Is it uncomfortable? You bet. Is it worth it? Yes. The choice to receive the gift of discomfort and inconvenience is yours. And your choice will either help you create heaven on earth, or just the opposite . . . it will send you into the low vibration of hopelessness and helplessness that we refer to as a living hell.
Faith that things happen for a reason is really the only way through. I’ve lost two sisters. The first when I was quite young — only about five. The second one when I was in my Saturn Return during my medical residence. When I got the news that she died in a car accident on her way home from teaching a gymnastics class, I was completely devastated. It felt as though lightning had struck my life. Life would never be the same. But I also knew that this was a time to practice what I had always preached. I had to surrender to a greater plan and remember that our Souls are immortal — we don’t die. I knew I would see my sister again one day. That eased my grief and gave this loss meaning. But I still cried myself to sleep for months. It took my mother far longer to come to peace with this loss, though she once said, “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it completely. And that’s okay.”
When you are up against a fear or a loss that has you in its grip, I can assure you that you are going to have feelings about it — anger, sorrow, sadness, fear. And, like my mom said, that’s okay. It’s not only okay; it’s the only way for the Soul to do what it came to do. What you don’t want is to remain permanently stuck in bitterness, anger, or chronic grief. While you’re here on earth, you have to live your life here — no matter what. That’s the contract.
How often have you finally come to grips with something that you have to release, and then you find that your willingness to release it magically released the problem? Of course, by then you have changed your vibration from fear to faith! You’ve surrendered your attachment. You’ve offered it all to the Divine. Jesus’s last words on the cross were “Father — into thy hands, I commend my fate.” We all have the ability to do this. It’s a process, not an event. It’s not intellectual. And it requires love and patience.
When you practice true surrender and offer everything to the Divine — over and over and over — you will eventually discover true spaciousness and peace opening up before you and within you. You will have transformed your fear into faith.
Originally published at medium.com