I GIVE UP
by Cynthia Sterling • Pittsburgh, PA

I stopped believing in life and I have no faith in it either. But I trust it. On the surface that statement may sound a bit out of whack, but for me it works.

Beliefs are always changing, crumbling or proved wrong. The first time my belief system completely fell apart I wasn’t doing anything special or in any kind of crisis. That was the scary part. It was a day, as they say, like any other until suddenly, nothing fit; nothing made sense and everything was wrong. I realize now, that the process was like that of playing the game of Jenga: Remove the wrong block and the tower will fall. I found myself in unknown territory, looking for the directions that would lead me back home.

I talked to a friend about my circumstance and her answer was magically simple: “Have faith,” she said with a reverential bow of her head, “and everything will come back together.”

It never did. So, I built up a new belief system. Once again I pulled out the wrong block.

Either there was something wrong with me, my constructs or the whole concept of believing. Maybe it was all three. The only thing I knew was that I was in agonizing pain. My other friend, who was a third year psychology major, offered some pretty-sounding jargon about transitions, how lucky I was to be experiencing so many, that there was nothing wrong with me, and so on and so forth. “And,” she added with an air of authority, “You’ll get through it.”

I didn’t much care if I got through it, went over it or around it, I just wanted out of it. Since believing was no longer working for me, I simply stopped believing and moved on to faith. Bravely, I went forth with faith: I wore it like a badge, carried it like a flag, lay down next to it like a “faithful” dog. But, the faithful (I can say this because, even though I wasn’t the best of the faithful, I walked among them for a while) are blind to change. You can prove them wrong and they will still stand firmly by or behind their faith. They’re normally willing to get their heads cut off for absolutely no reason. I almost got my head severed too. After I narrowly escaped that drama, and once my adrenaline level went back to normal, I realized that if I was going to carry my head in my hands for my remaining years on this planet, I needed a reason. A really, really super good reason. When none proved good enough, faith and I, without any fanfare, quietly parted ways.

There I was: no belief, no faith. I was alone in a void wondering aloud, “What the heck?” There was no heavenly voice answering me, no spiritual superstar to guide me, no vibration of Universal Love to comfort me. I was blind, deaf, and feeling pretty dumb. I’m putting this mildly when I describe my state of being as extremely TICKED OFF. I came so far just to have everything stripped away from me, again? That was a question, not a statement. I understood the meaning of Cosmic Joke and I wasn’t laughing. Although I was pretty sure I heard a faint Cosmic giggle on the wind.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m done,” I stated rather flatly to no one in particular. “I’m done looking for answers. I’m done searching for the whys and wherefores.” And I meant it from the depths of my soul.

As far as I was concerned, the game was over and I lost. I decided that I was simply going to live life the very best way I could from moment to moment. If I screwed up, I screwed up. If I didn’t, well then, great. I’d celebrate.

To live my life that way, I learned that it required a huge amount of trust. Trust that I, at any give time, was where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I had to forget about the outcome and just enjoy the journey. This didn’t happen overnight. I had to go plow through the mountain of “Disappointment” first. (That’s another Cynthia Sermon best saved for another day.)

Somewhere along the way I discovered that life is sometimes a gentle hug and a soft smile. Other times it’s a hard slap to the head. It’s just life doing what life does and being what life is. I surrendered to it. Surrendered, not as in giving up or giving in, but as in relinquishing what no longer worked. I did this not out of belief or faith but out of trust that life and I are partners. I did this with the realization that beliefs are from the past, faith is a future yearning and trust is a present moment companion.

As companions do, we have our knock-down, drag-out fights, our moments of waking up next to each other and wondering how in the hell we made it this far. We also experience moments of joy that leave us dancing nude in the summer rainfall.

Yeah, Trust and I are pretty good companions…so far.

Cynthia Lee Shore-Sterling is the Publisher and CEO SterlingHouse Publisher, Inc, Executive Partner of International Book Management Corp and Executive Producer of GhostHunters:PSI. She is the author/ghostwriter of twenty-eight books including the popular Ghost Tales series. Cynthia was featured on the Maury Povich Show, Philly After Midnight, City Chronicle and news channel affiliates of NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX and interviewed by Time Magazine, The Pittsburgh Tribune, and The Christian Science Monitor. Cynthia has also been a guest on over 2,000 radio stations, including Radio Free Europe and National Public Radio.