Faith In Tested Times

July 12th

What kind of a person are you? Do you like staying around positive people? Can you sustain your true identity with people who are negative? 

When the entire world was just starting to face the wrath of COVID 19, I was sleeping in the balcony, the breeze on my face, under the sky in the balcony reading my book. I had an entire plan for what I was going to be doing in this really important time that the universe gave me. 

The first month of quarantine and slowly while everyone stayed at home, I realized that physical space cannot be effected until mental space is affected. Even though it wasn't too much, it felt like a big change. I felt suffocated not because I was in the house all the time, but in my mind, I felt trapped in an endless loop of being grateful and accepting everything. I was the prison keeper. It felt like I couldn't get out and defeat myself to the world. 

I started to feel like I was just a body that was working in a routine, and couldn't fight the prison keeper (myself). In the mid of April, while I was in deep thoughts and feeling very emotional I wrote to my sister how I felt, but unfortunately, it went to the wrong group. 

A discussion was called forth which seemed like a consultation but genuinely wasn't. I was complained about said that I was superficial, I laugh too much, I was selfish and I was fake. Being a personality like me - I generally don't keep things in my mind, but this time I wonder why these things just kept running in my mind, I couldn't sleep at nights. I had random breakdowns. I felt so overwhelmed and hurt. 

Taking a step back all this seems so stupid, and today I understand when you look back at things they feel so irrelevant. I feel this is so unimportant to my life and that I need to grow above all of this. 

At that moment though I felt like I had nowhere to go, I felt the pain in my outer body on my chest, I felt overwhelmed, rushed. 

In the moment we criticize, we hurt, we tend to judge everything quickly, we second guess everything, we assume, we form negative energy around ourselves, we overthink, we form opinions, we lose ourselves to the talk about things from the past, suddenly we remember only the bad memories, we cry, we complain, we guilt ourselves, we have mental breakdowns, we feel lost, we feel broken, we feel lonely in this big world, we try hurting ourselves physically, we move away from everyone, we detach ourselves, we beg for forgiveness... and in all of this we also learn, we grow, we adapt, we change, we understand, we know love differently, we connect with people we never thought we would, we develop qualities to serve, we learn to survive, we begin to become grateful to the few people who constantly give us their support, we learn to forgive, we understand ourselves, we learn about relationships, we being acknowledging people and their different thoughts, we feel driven to try motivating ourselves even when we feel hopeless most of the time, we wake up each day looking outside at everything moving as it should, we adapt to the fast-changing world, we wake up looking for hope, we find ourselves again in the process, we fight, we learn to have faith, we hope, we develop strengths, we believe, we believe in ourselves, we bounce back harder, stronger and invincible. 

With each difficult test, God puts us through, there's a lot of moulding that takes place. If faired well, the test doesn't repeat, if not, it keeps going through until we are able to reflect the qualities of himself.

What's your test cheat sheet?