You Don't Have To Screw People Over to Survive Pt.2

How A Traffic Light Taught Me To Have Faith In the Fact That I Was Alive, and A Real Human Being

Saint Macarius the Great with Cherub

Click here to read Part I: You Don't Have To Screw People Over To Survive

"Let us, who mystically represent the cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving trinity, lay aside all worldly cares, that we may receive the King of all, invisibly escorted by the angelic hosts. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

Cont'd from Part I

Con Fidelis. With faith over time became the questions With faith in what? And that over time became In faith with Whom? 

I learned that an expression of faith is perseverance. Abused children I think struggle with faith, because so many bad things has happened to them, and they also know that the world doesn’t become safer just because you “grow up.”

There was a time when I was walking in Lacey, Washington, and I was crossing the street. But I was so dysregulated, I totally felt as though I didn’t exist, and that nothing around me existed. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. It was a terrible state to be in, and I was thinking that since I didn’t exist, I couldn’t trust that what my eyes seemed to be perceiving didn’t in actually exist either.  I think it was the closest I came to if I had tried later that day, I would have succeeded in killing myself.

As I approached the crosswalk, a thought came to me. I could trust that the light will turn red for the cars and green for me, and I could trust that the cars in their respective spheres would be obedient to the lights. Then I could with faith walk across the street. It was a moment…I hesitated. I felt such fear…but I decided to walk, and I did, and the lights didn’t suddenly turn, and the cars didn’t suddenly become disobedient to the lights.

This was another turning point, a linchpin point that whenever I felt that feeling of utter sense of not being actually alive, and not existing, I could remember that moment I walked across the street in faith that a traffic light would obey the rules of the road.

I’ve learned that most of us are brutal with each other-psychologically, mentally, emotionally and even physically (war),  because we are so afraid that we don’t have what it takes to survive. We have to overcome the programming we learnt in our broken homes and society that we are not enough, and it’s a dog eat dog world, and the only way to survive is to become a dog in the quest to be the fittest survivour in your jungle.

The more I walk in Christ, the more I learn, sometimes the hard way, that you don’t have to screw people over to survive. And you shouldn’t.