Monday, February 6, 2012

SOS - Luminosity

Faith is a bit like romantic love. Some days, especially in the very beginning, but even after a long while of being together (if you are blessed with a fine marriage), faith feels like early love. It's all-consuming and exciting. You feel positively lit from within - like a radiant joy inside you that is there for all to see because you couldn't possibly hide it even if you wanted to it. I love that state of luminosity - don't you? I pray often to God to allow me to experience that more frequently. But I wonder if the meat and bones of faith is in the more quotidian days; like the days in your marriage where your love is more an act of conscious will and service than an inspired, exciting wash of emotion. The first blush of love is easy. There's very few people who haven't experienced it, and many people have experienced it multiple times. But carrying on when that feeling is at an ebb is something that a significant number of people have never learned - both in marriage and in faith. It's hard to learn how to do that in marriage, but, for me personally, even harder to be strong in my spiritual walk when I'm feeling anything BUT lit-from-within. As I'm trying to come to terms with a week that started off in luminosity but fizzled into uninspired parenting, housekeeping, and just plain "being", it brings me comfort to think that those types of days are tests that forge my faith and draw me closer to God.

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