ho·ly
[hoh-lee]
adjective, ho·li·er, ho·li·est.
holy: having a spiritually pure quality: a holy love.
i've been thinking a lot about faith and the automatic confidence we have in our parents when we are young. how we unquestionably take their hand and trust what they tell us. i suppose this can be good or bad, depending on the situation. but i was thinking particularly about when i was a child, in first grade, and we lived in a small trailer somewhere in georgia. my dad was stationed at an army post nearby and we lived off a dirt road. my mom drove us every day across the state line to take us to a private catholic school in south carolina. that was the last private catholic school i went to, because our life soon took a different path. we didn't have much but i didn't know that. what i did have, was security.
not because of religion.
but because of faith.
i remember the day my mom told us that my dad "got orders" and we were moving to europe. i remember crying, and her asking me with a surprised tone, "why are you crying?"
i said, "i'm scared to go on an airplane."
my mom promised me that it would be okay. she said it would feel much like riding on a bus, only smoother. and that at times i might even forget we were moving through the air.
i took her hand and believed without a doubt. both emotionally and physically. i believed that the plane ride would be okay, and that we would be okay and intact when we arrived overseas, that i wouldn't find myself all alone in a foreign land, not knowing the language, sitting on cobblestone, surrounded by endless streams of busy strangers unaware of my aloneness, myself unable to ask for help and no one knowing i was even lost.
i put all my 7 years of faith in this one person.
looking back, i don't know if she was afraid at the time. it never occurred to me that she might be nervous or anxious about any of it. i didn't know enough to question or wonder about that.
i trusted her with my life, my fears, and my rapidly loudly beating little heart.
i think it is sacred, and an honor, when we have moments of faith like that as adults, with people other than our parents. when we can physically and/or emotionally take someone's hand and with all of our being, and our rapidly loudly beating wounded heart, take a true leap of faith, and step where we have never stepped before.
i believe that when we do experience it, our spirit is trusting another spirit,
and it is less like a human bond
and more of a holy bond.
♥
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| a few years before my first memorable step of faith |
