Found

There are those things that guide us along, forever bringing us to a better resting place, and there are those which haunt us, moments, trials, relationships, which never reached the potential fruition we still dream of today, and yet hopefully we continue to believe.

I have stretched myself thin to become thick. I have sacraficed so that I might gain. I have let go, detached essentially, so that I might attach. It is my choice to embrace the belief that “what if?” is a question asked in vain, and this is because although I will always question, I long for faith more than any other element of the human existence, and I believe for I have never ceased to pray. Thus, while I may feel lost, I believe in Divine Guidance, and while I strive to give myself up to this completely, and this proves itself to be the ultimate struggle, I believe nonetheless, and while this belief in the Unknown is my ultimate reassurance, I await the moment when all that surrounds me looks familiar and I am able to see that I am as found as I have always been.

had they turned wholly unto God and cast aside all that they had learned from their divines, He would assuredly have guided them through His grace and acquainted them with the sacred truths that are enshrined within His imperishable utterances. For far be 41 it from His greatness and His glory that He should turn away a seeker at His door, cast aside from His Threshold one who hath set his hopes on Him, reject one who hath sought the shelter of His shade, deprive one who hath held fast to the hem of His mercy, or condemn to remoteness the poor one who hath found the river of His riches.

(Baha’u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 40)

Juxtapose

I want to paint the world with my words and can feel the colors in my mind returning, surfacing, flowing from the internal to the external so that I can again define, again identify my place among all other things, the many details this existence consists of. When I sleep to dream as opposed to awake feeling as though there are dreams all around, I cease to yearn to describe the context of it all. A piece of me, significant in size, has been asleep for a time, suppressed to that outer part of me where existence is real but acknowledgment is necessary for actualization. Perhaps this is where people put their youth like tendencies, to save for a rainy day or when such fantasy and ecstasy is acceptable by the world around them again; what a tragic fate.

Life flows in cycles, consistent and seemingly unbearable in nature at times, and yet there is Divine wisdom is juxtaposing the tragic and the beautiful. Such as the ways of love, there will be one who breaks your heart but this pain we want to label as senseless will evolve into reward when the one who puts it back together descends upon us. We are created to feel and this is our human lens through which we are able to see the Beloved. So let us bathe in gratitude that we have had the love we now mourn in our lives at all, for essentially it is this love, our tormentor and savior, which makes life worth living.

TRIALS A GIFT FROM GOD

Thou hast written concerning the tests that have come upon thee. To the sincere ones, tests are as a gift from God, the Exalted, for a heroic person hasteneth, with the utmost joy and gladness, to the tests of a violent battlefield, but the coward is afraid and trembles and utters moaning and lamentation. Likewise, an expert student prepareth and memorizeth his lessons and exercises with the utmost effort, and in the day of examination he appeareth with infinite joy before the master. Likewise, the pure gold shineth radiantly in the fire of test. Consequently, it is made clear that for holy souls, trials are as the gift of God, the Exalted; but for weak souls they are an unexpected calamity. This test is just as thou hast written: it removeth the rust of egotism from the mirror of the heart until the Sun of Truth may shine therein. For, no veil is greater than egotism and no matter 372 how thin that covering may be, yet it will finally veil man entirely and prevent him from receiving a portion from the eternal bounty.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i World Faith – Abdu’l-Baha Section, p. 371)