Hello Maryam, As-Salaam-Alaikum and Welkom,
I only joined this site recently and I think it's really wonderful that you are interested in exploring different beliefs in your quest for a higher understanding and Truth. Clearly there is something inside you-- in your heart, your soul, that is drawn by a deep spiritual yearning and magnetized by the power of God in seeking after Him. I truly do understand what it is like to be in the same place of searching, questioning, doubting, feeling curiosities about the Big Picture of the Universe and Reality. There is something in you yet to be fulfilled and you have not yet arrived on the solid ground of certainty or faith. Believe me I know this all too well.
Even now I still wobble around in my journey with the Lord, struggling to attain the fullness of peace that comes with total surrender to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I waver, I stall, I stumble, and I succumb to the negative forces that can begin to push me astray. But I do not flee, I do not reject, I do not turn my back-- I refuse to forsake my earnest desire to know the Lord and follow His will, in spite of any hardship or roadblock that may temporarily hinder my progress. I have gone astray before, far astray, indeed for a number of years I wandered aimlessly in a wilderness of spiritual ambiguity, looking for Truth here and there, under any stone, inside any cavern or any cellar I could find. An insatiable longing to be close to God never left me, but I was lost in a gray no-man's land of bedeviling confusion, grappling with a slew of unanswered questions, drifting further from the Light as my heart grew emptier, as I muddled my spirit and poisoned my mind with numbing agents, drugs, alcohol, obscuring my world in escapist fantasies and false promises of satisfaction. Quick fixes that offered no hope. No salvation. No joy.
What once was a gray valley of uncertainty had darkened into a desert pit of total despair. I crumbled. Fell apart. My will to live shriveled up over a long period of solitude and exceeding turmoil. I had lost all touch with God, lost all traces of the Light, I collapsed at the edge of the abyss and stared long and hard into it, contemplating whether I should take the fatal plunge.
But I am still here. I have reversed the course of my spiritual downward spiral, and while I am still intensely suffering, battling with all kinds of hurt and heartache and life obstacles, I have completely accepted my need for God. I have run back to Him. I have called upon Him and confessed my sickly condition of disrepair. I continue to pray and pray, continue to surrender and fight to stay constant in my surrender while I seek greater wisdom to discern the Lord's will for my life. For me the answer is in Christ.
My faith was long dormant-- but the hungering of it was always felt. It has gone through a long period of gestation and is now beginning to germinate. I am finding myself closer to God, finding my world brightened, my life more secured in God's strength. My journey is far from over and I am still hoping that soon enough my faith will begin to flourish.
I am happy to share anything with you that I have learned from my long, ongoing spiritual journey. I would be more than happy to offer my perspective about anything you wish to gain a better understanding of.
It is good that you have taken the step to come here. I believe there is a reason for this. Continue to seek, seek fervently, the Lord will bless you in your search. For so it is written:
- "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7)
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets,"Little Gidding"
