Keeping the Faith

You know that feel­ing when you leave a big test know­ing you total­ly aced it, only to have it returned to you cov­ered in red pen?

Or when you stay up late and don’t do your home­work because the weath­er­man lit­er­al­ly promised that there would be a snow day, and not a flake of snow falls from the sky?

Or maybe when you were super excit­ed because you had the most votes on your schol­ar­ship essay, and when you see an enve­lope in your mail­box from the Mayo Clin­ic, you tear it open because you are absolute­ly con­vinced that it is a let­ter declar­ing that you won…and then it’s just a giant bill?

Yea, I’m there.

Friends, the truth is, you did your part and then some. As I said in my last post, you shared and emailed and liked and com­ment­ed. You blew me away with your sup­port and faith and thanks to you, on the last day of vot­ing, I had the most votes by a landslide.

But the judges did­n’t pick me.

It’s like being vot­ed cap­tain of the team and nev­er leav­ing the bench.

I’d like to tell you that I brushed it off easily.

I’d like to tell you that I real­ly did­n’t care that much.

I’d like to tell you that I had­n’t already start­ed a list of ques­tions and spe­cif­ic items to address at the conference.

But I can’t.

I was crushed. I might still be a lit­tle bit crushed.

[Ok fine, guilty as charged.]

Some­thing inside of me was so sure that this was my chance to do some­thing big. I just knew it.

Turns out diges­tion isn’t the only area where my gut is lacking.

So it’s cer­tain­ly not the first time I’ve been kicked down a moun­tain I hoped to climb. And it’s cer­tain­ly not the first time I’ve been dis­ap­point­ed. But some­how this one dug just a lit­tle bit deep­er and is tak­ing a lit­tle bit longer to heal.

But if I have learned only one thing through­out this whole jour­ney, it is that every kick down the moun­tain is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn. I have to have faith that my cards are play­ing out in a way that opens the doors for growth and experience.

I just have to.

Faith is a big word.

It means so many dif­fer­ent things to so many peo­ple, and in my opin­ion, none of them are wrong. Faith is an extreme­ly per­son­al and reflec­tive piece of our lives and it man­i­fests itself dif­fer­ent­ly in all of us.

And that’s ok.

But for me, right now at this moment, faith is the foun­da­tion on which I stand. It is the hope in the unseen. It is my con­fi­dent belief that though I may be dis­ap­point­ed, this is a chance for me to grow and learn and dive a lit­tle bit deep­er into who I am. After all, unex­pect­ed as it may be, noth­ing can be lost by an oppor­tu­ni­ty to look a lit­tle far­ther into your inner work­ings and find out what real­ly and tru­ly lies at your core.

And although there are some days when it is real­ly hard to keep the faith and it is real­ly hard to breathe deep and know that greater things are ahead…I do my best.

Iron­i­cal­ly, one of my favorite movie quotes is from the 2000 rom-com “Keep­ing the Faith,” a true VHS clas­sic. “The truth is you can nev­er tell your­self there is only one thing you could be. You can­not make a real com­mit­ment unless you accept that it’s a choice that you keep mak­ing again and again and again.”

I was surprised.

And crushed.

And yes, maybe even a lit­tle bit bit­ter. [insert sheep­ish face here]

But what I do with those feel­ings is up to me, and I want to make the choice again and again and again to keep the faith. I want to be open to new expe­ri­ences. I want to let the feel­ing of your amaz­ing sup­port rise above the stab of dis­ap­point­ment and pave a path towards opportunity.

So I’ll do my best.

After all, I hear it’s pret­ty chilly in Minnesota.