Believe.

I'm fallible.  But the fact that I am capable of believing at all is rather remarkable.  I may not always believe things that are true, and sometimes I may place far too much importance on a belief, but I believe.  I have deep-seated trust that is rooted in I know not what. 

How do I believe? 

What is believing anyway?  That is a question I could likely answer somehow, with definitions of trust and faith and acknowledging facts about the unknown, but the question of how is far more puzzling.  I rest my confidence in a Higher Power, an Ultimate Truth, an Ever-changing Mother, a Powerful Father, an Entity which Encompasses Creation, and I am believing.  I do it without thought to its rightness or wrongness because it is neither.  There is simply, within my heart, within the world, within the Heavens, God.

God exists.

You may not believe so.  And that may be as true for you as it is for me that God is.  Somehow that doesn't matter anymore.  I feel no compulsion to convince you, for my belief does not stem from an assumption that believing makes me better, more advanced, or more spiritually evolved than you.  It does not cause me to think that I, with my belief, will land in paradise while you rot in flames.  You are my equal.

I believe in You.

Perhaps that is the greatest evidence of God's existence - for me.  You exist, and I believe it.  You, with your mind and your soul, me with my heart and my spirit.  We are.  Right here, on earth, in this space, in this time, we are. 

i am.

With time as complete insignificance, unfettered by borders, walls, diplomas, or signatures, I exist.  I existed. I will exist.  The present does not, it is simply the changing of the past to the future.  Yet still i am.  Not I AM - the changeless changing One, complete and always growing in my soul - but me, i, the human soul and flesh and mind.  I may be one tiny piece of this world, in the smallest corner of the expanse that God fills, but i am.  And I exist to revel in the space I am given, the expansive power that surrounds me, the world of humans i am lucky enough to inhabit, and the Beauty of God.

Hell yeah.

In so many ways I have changed.  But in so many ways I've also stayed exactly the same.  Sometimes I look over my life and things that feel like they happened just last year happened almost 10 years ago, and other times last year feels like decades ago itself.  Life is all tangly, isn't it?  At this point in my life, being almost 26 years old - perhaps the 'prime' of my life? - I feel as though every experience and belief and moment of my life to this point has been balled up and squished into who I am today.  I may not be the Pagan Christian 16-year-old, nor the confused 18-year-old trying to learn how to make friends at Bible school.  I may not be the fundamentalist Christian of my 21st year of life, nor the confused and questioning girl of 23. 

Apparently, however, one's neurons finish fusing in your mid-twenties.  So my brain is finished, I guess.  Now I just get to keep filling it.  Maybe now I can see more clearly who I truly am.

Am I Christian?  Yes.  Am I "always exploring"? Yes.  Do I love climbing trees and feeling the wind in my hair?  Absolutely.  Am I better at making friends?  Hell yeah.