Faith

Every New Year, one of my best friends and her sister choose a word to take into the next year. A word they need, a word they think reflects where they want to go, or just a word they want to bear in mind throughout the new year. Every year my friend posts it on her Facebook, and it makes me think about what word I want to take into the New Year too.

My word for 2021 was ‘be’. I just wanted to be, just live and relax. After having to take a lot of time out in 2020, as we all did, I definitely felt a benefit from just being, relaxing, (or trying to at least) and making much-needed time for me. To not be caught up in the general chaos of life and just be for a moment. I think it’s a mentality that I kept up in 2021 and one that I want to stick with for the rest of my life. I don’t get caught up in the bigger picture a lot these days and I think I successfully just get to be in the present and do whatever I need in the moment.

Which leads me to my word for 2022: Faith.

Faith feels like a religious word, but I don’t mean it in that kind of way; I mean it in a spiritual way. After the mess my life had become over the last two years, after all the trauma I’ve experienced, and learning to just be in the chaos and trauma, I’ve now found I have been able to let go of the life I expected and make space in my mind for a new life; a new life I have faith that I will find, or that will find me.

On New Year’s Eve, I planned to be asleep for the start of the new year. I had been at work all day and I was up early for work the next day too. I was tired and ready to go to sleep by the time 00:00 came around. I laid in bed and heard fireworks bursting into the sky all around me. I pushed the covers off me and crouched on my pillow, pulled back the curtain, and watched my neighbours setting off fireworks, all while hearing the drunken, merry people celebrating at the club at the top of my road.

Watching fireworks light up the sky, I told myself ‘I am exactly where I am supposed to be.’ and I didn’t mean in bed, I meant in life.

I have been led to this time in my life by everything before it, and even though it still feels as if I’m living in a big mess some days, I’m supposed to be in this mess. I’m supposed to be here and I’m supposed to be experiencing this at this exact time. I have faith that I am meant to be exactly where I am.

Honestly, I’m not sure if this is a strange way of me choosing to not deal with what’s going on, but fighting things in life is costing too much of my energy and I’ve learned that I would much rather put that energy toward positivity, than fighting what’s going on.

“Everything happens for a reason” is something I’ve lived by for many years, (Also a topic I will post about soon in another installment of my ‘Spirituality and Me’ series) and I feel like ‘faith’ is an extension of this.

I have faith that I am where I am supposed to be, faith that the people I meet are people I am supposed to meet, conversations I have are conversations I was always meant to have, and what has been could not have been any other way.

Having faith enables me to let go of anger, anxiety, and worry; it lets me just live. What is meant to be, will be and I have faith in that sentiment for 2022 and beyond.

I have faith.