I encountered faith often when I lived in between homes. And while I cannot speak for millions of homeless people who sleep on couches of strangers and friends; I cannot speak for people who live in cars or run down trailers or on the street or in shelters, faith plays a role in all of our lives. Faith inspires us to wake up each day and hope keeps us going while we circumvent challenges.
When I lost a studio apartment on September 1, 2015 (which launched a year of living in attics, basements, and hotel rooms), I nearly suffocated from chlorine bleach fumes at a hotel in Bellingham. The next day when I woke up, waves of nausea and a migraine greeted me. My eyes and throat burned throughout the night. I had yet to buy a cell phone and I was experiencing difficulties with my laptop.
But even though I could barely gag down half a container of yogurt while I tried to get a hold of a woman renting out a temporary apartment, I experienced the faith that everything would work out for the time being. And people were helpful, including the concierge at the hotel who offered to have someone drive me to the storage unit so I could drop off my belongings. And the woman with the apartment for rent picked me up downtown to take me to the residence. (And the hotel refunded me part of the cost of the room since I became ill from chlorine fumes).
After a shower and a long night’s rest, I woke up feeling like myself again. Hope returned as I responded to more housing ads, ate a good breakfast, and took a walk around the Columbia Neighborhood—where I hoped to find a home at that time. Oddly, I did end up living for several months in that neighborhood in another temporary apartment rented to me by a kind family.
But there were times when I had to find a different place to sleep each night and these periods stretched for one or two weeks. I took out my Energy Oracle cards and asked where I would sleep that particular night and I never slept on a street or in a shelter. As much as I ranted and complained about lack of housing, something always came through for me, almost miraculously and I practiced gratitude more often than I ranted-though my gratitude was silent and my rants were out loud and on social media.
Faith is not the absence of fear or doubt. Faith comes when we face our fears and move forward even if that means leaping into the void. I’m not alone because most people have faced taking leaps of faith—homeless people and people recovering from illness do this every moment of the day. No one really knows where they are heading or what appears on the trail up ahead. No one predicts the Dark Night of the Soul or when initiations show up in their lives.
To an extent, our thoughts matter because they shape our emotions which eventually carve out our lives. Many spiritual teachers claim that we can start over again at any time, but most of us grapple with this concept. We feel that we really blew it. That no one will give us a second chance, but faith will give us many chances.
Faith comes from the Zodiac Signs Pisces and Sagittarius. And these signs tell us to go with the flow and to expand our consciousness. They focus on the invisible realms mainly or step in and out of dreams. If we can imagine it, we can create it, for these are creative signs on the Zodiac Wheel.
I’m not big on Abraham Hicks any longer nor do I prefer to focus on healing from narcissist abuse videos any longer either (two ends of the spectrum). Whether or not I suffer from PTSD matters so much any longer since it’s time to journey past any label or diagnosis and replace it with the faith that I am in the right place and in the right way. The truth lies somewhere in between new age thought and psychological disorders.
Yesterday I met a woman on a bus and then I spoke to her on the ferry. She seemed stuck on a mental health label despite her obvious inner beauty and creative gifts. I sat on my hands even though I wanted to coach her to explore her gifts and to stop focusing on her diagnosis which left her feeling stuck. And perhaps, people have felt the same way about me and other creative and beautiful people.
Diagnosis, on one hand, have the power to set us free if we choose to empower ourselves through a healing process. However, on the other hand, diagnosis can also keep people feeling stuck because they project that they are undeserving and that they are faulty goods when in almost every case, the opposite scenario is true.
We all face challenges. For some people that are recovering from addictions and for others, it is finding a home and meaningful employment and yet for others, it is recovering their entire life. All this is possible through faith because when we step into the unknown, we are the ones who manifest miracles.
Here’s a song to restore faith.
Metaphysics 4 Everyday Living 
Beautiful
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