But First, Trust

“Trust is having the experience to base our confidence on. Faith is having nothing and believing anyway.” -Anne Brady-Cronin

I was recently talking with a client of mine about making some fairly substantial changes in her business. She’s been quite successful by most people’s standards, and her own (which is the best), but is finding herself wanting “more” from herself and her business.

You see, she’s being lead from the inside. She’s feeling this “thing” as she calls it, this telling her there is more there – more she can do, help, and in an all-around way, more. Of course, she feels compelled to follow this inner urging, we’ll call it Spirit, to find out what she can do, what this all means, and where this all goes. And then, panic sets in. What will happen to her? There is a weird excitement, apprehension, nervousness, doubt, uncertainty, tightness in our stomachs that comes when Spirit is asking us to do something we’ve not done before. If that’s not bad enough, what if we don’t know anyone who’s done what we believe we’re being asked to do, before?! The horror!

It’s exciting and nerve-wracking at the exact same time, and for many of us, we can’t really tell the difference and just feel nauseated. Oh sure, I know a handful of you crazy cats that love inspiration when it strikes, love the change, the unknown, the mystery of it all. You throw caution to the wind and jump anytime something that looks remotely like a parachute, or sail shows up in your life. Seriously, I know a handful. The rest like to take things with a level of certainty that we’re not going to die, or worse, be humiliated by our failures. Yes, I said that in the proper order of severity. Death…or worse, humiliation.

Change is great when we’re talking about the hairstyle we’ve had for 15 years and are sick of or the wall color in our living room. But when it’s our career, and it could involve the failure of our business and becoming a laughing stock, well now, things just slowed down quite a bit.

If you run a business, (I’m just working on getting used to calling mine a business. Forever I’ve considered it my practice, but have recently been challenged to reframe its value and level in my own mind…challenge accepted) or have, or are responsible for running someone else’s, you know how the public sees you are really important. How your colleagues see you in sometimes even more important, and while identifying your unique brand is paramount, potentially alienating your peers and your clients is, well, deadly. Or, so it seems.

So this “thing” is gnawing at her constantly. She knows she’s been asking, prodding, still somewhat gently at this point as all of this Spirit, lead, intuition stuff seems new. I challenge this since most people I work with have been operating on their intuition forever and just never realized that’s what was happening, but onward, identifying it as intuition, Spirit, often seems like a new and very edgy thing when folks first start working with me. They haven’t learned to trust it, yet.

As she and I start identifying “thing” with real words and descriptions, her Guides begin to talk about trust and faith. They talk about where she’s been and what she’s been through, her family, her past, her struggles, and how she has always been cared for, as she is still alive and well. Then they speak about faith. Faith can be another challenge altogether. Developing trust comes from recognizing exactly what her Guides were talking to her about, we’ve always been kept safe and alive, and so it seems fair that Spirit may just know what it’s doing, and may just have a purpose for us to be here, even if we don’t know exactly what it is. And so, we begin to relax just a bit and settle in for the ride. We trust it. Hear me clearly, trust means we have a history with being ok in the end, it does not mean we are always kept comfortable, or that things are always easy, or “flow’ for us. Trust doesn’t mean we always get what we want when we want it. Trust means Spirit is watching out for us, we always end up ok as is proven by the fact of having the capacity to read this and understand it. Sometimes life hands us the tail end of things and it feels really crappy. Often times, we live long enough to recognize the method to the madness and then say things like “if it hadn’t been for (fill in the blank), I would’ve never gotten here”. Sometimes we’re left in the dust of what the heck a situation was all about, how it serves us, etc. and we never really know why it was necessary. But, we’re still there on the other side of it having those thoughts, which means we survived it. Trust. I have, so I probably will.

Faith is another animal altogether. Faith means you have no previous experience with this but you’re going to be ridiculous and believe only the best anyway. Faith is a three-year-old, and I love it. Faith allows us to step freely into our wisdom, with reckless abandon into our intuition leading us, knowing we’re held and supported the entire time. Again, there’s no guarantee of endless comfort and easy-breezy sailing, but faith doesn’t necessarily have those expectations. Faith knows the journey forward is where the magic is. Faith speaks to us in a whisper of “Go. You can do it”. And so, we do.

Spirit talked with her about using trust to get to faith “put trust first, use it for fuel. Faith in the quiet whisper will come”. So often it’s about remembering. Remembering we are held, loved, blessed, fortunate, held, even when we don’t always feel that way.  Faith asks us to see around what seems to be and live for what is just over the horizon. Just beyond our sight and our reach, but our intuitive knowing something, something right, is out there waiting for us to show up to it. Trust asks us to remember that we have always done it that way.
She’s practicing. This incredibly talented, gifted, intuitive Spirit, is practicing what it means to remember she’s always held. And from there, to let Faith come to her side, excitedly pointing towards the horizon, towards that which is known only inside of her in a still murky undefined picture, but is distinctly experienced as some ”thing”.

I invite you to experience the “thing” that lives inside of you, the creative magic saved just for you to express into this world. Let faith find you, let yourself hear that gentle whisper, “Go. You can do it”, and journey forward to the horizon.

Blessings Galore, Anne

Leave a Reply