Faith

A Day That Passed Too Quickly

Today was one of those days that seemed to disappear almost as soon as it began.

There was a haircut, a swim, a café visit, time spent working together on a small creative project, a trip to the park, collecting siblings from nursery, dinner, fruit afterwards, and preparations for the first day of school.

Nothing extraordinary happened.

And yet it felt deeply satisfying.

At one point, my daughter remarked that time was going by too fast.

I knew exactly what she meant.

There are days when we seem to spend our time looking ahead, moving from one task to another, thinking about what comes next before we have fully arrived in what is here.

Then there are other days.

Days that seem to slip through our fingers because we have been completely immersed in them.

This was one of those days.

I was tired and said so more than once. Yet despite the tiredness, something felt different.

I wasn't trying to get somewhere else.

I wasn't waiting for the day to finish.

For most of the day, I was simply there.

With my children.

With the conversation.

With the swimming.

With the food.

With the laughter.

With the ordinary unfolding of the day.

And perhaps that was what made it feel so full.

Not because anything remarkable happened.

But because I was fully there for it.

The Return of Familiar Thoughts

Later that evening, lying in bed, familiar thoughts returned.

Bills.

Banking.

Practicalities.

The future.

Questions of safety and security.

There is a particular kind of anxiety that comes with loving children.

No matter how much we prepare, organise, protect and care, there is always a part of us that wishes we could guarantee their wellbeing forever.

Love makes us vulnerable in that way.

The more deeply we love, the more aware we become of how much matters.

Before going to sleep, I prayed for my children, as I often do.

Not because prayer offers certainty.

Not because prayer removes risk.

But because there comes a point where planning reaches its limit.

Beyond that point lies something else.

And lately, the word that keeps returning to me is faith.

Questions That Cannot Be Solved

Another thought surfaced during the day.

I found myself wondering whether my life will always look the way it does now.

Whether there is room for something more.

Whether there is space for partnership alongside the life I have built.

The question did not feel sad.

Nor did it feel urgent.

It felt more like curiosity.

A wondering about possibilities I cannot yet see.

The more I sat with it, the more I realised that there is no calculation capable of answering such a question.

Perhaps that is true of many of the questions that matter most.

Will the people I love be safe?

What shape will the future take?

Who might walk beside me?

What experiences are still waiting to arrive?

Life rarely offers certainty in advance.

Some questions seem to ask us not for answers, but for patience.

Beneath the Summer Sky

When I think back to camping earlier this summer, what remains with me most strongly is not a particular activity or event.

It is a feeling.

A sense of being.

Lying beneath the summer sky, watching stars appear one by one, occasionally noticing a satellite crossing overhead, I felt connected to something larger than my plans, worries and calculations.

The stars did not answer my questions.

Nature did not provide instructions.

The future remained just as uncertain as before.

Yet something in me relaxed.

Not because I knew more.

But because, for a while, I stopped needing to.

Nature rarely seems interested in explanations.

It simply is.

The trees do not explain themselves.

The stars do not justify their existence.

The seasons do not defend their timing.

And somehow, in their presence, many of my questions become softer.

Not solved.

Just softer.

The Things That Matter Most

Looking back, I realise that many of the most meaningful things in my life began without guarantees.

Motherhood.

Friendships.

Creative projects.

Growing food.

Bringing home chickens.

Experiences that felt important long before I knew where they would lead.

None arrived with certainty attached.

None came with a clear map.

Yet many of them became some of the richest parts of my life.

Life rarely unfolds according to plan.

More often, it unfolds through invitations.

A conversation.

A decision.

A feeling.

A step taken before the destination is visible.

Only later do we begin to understand where the path was leading.

Faith as Experience

The more I reflect on faith, the less interested I become in defining it.

Instead, I find myself becoming curious about how it is experienced.

There have been moments in my life that have left me with a feeling that something meaningful is taking place beneath the surface of events.

Not through certainty.

Not through explanations.

Not through guarantees.

But through patterns.

Connections.

Unexpected echoes.

Moments that ask for attention.

I realise that someone else may interpret those moments differently.

Perhaps they would call them coincidence.

Perhaps chance.

Perhaps simply the human tendency to make meaning.

I genuinely do not know.

And increasingly, I feel comfortable not knowing.

What interests me is how such moments affect me.

They slow me down.

They draw my attention.

They make me curious.

They invite wonder.

And perhaps wonder is closer to faith than certainty ever could be.

A Conversation With Life

As I sat with these reflections, I reread what I had written.

Something felt incomplete.

Not wrong.

Just unfinished.

I found myself returning to the same question again and again.

And then, quite unexpectedly, something clicked.

The phrase trusting life no longer felt sufficient.

Not because it was wrong.

But because it quietly assumed a separation.

As though life existed over there, and I existed over here, trying to decide whether I trusted it.

The more I sat with this, the less sense it made.

Who was this "I" trying to trust life?

Wasn't I part of life?

Wasn't the same life that moves through the seasons, grows trees, fills the night sky with stars and brings flowers into bloom also moving through me?

The realisation felt surprisingly simple.

I cannot trust life without also trusting myself.

Not my plans.

Not my calculations.

Not my attempts to control everything.

But the life within me.

The same life that has carried me through uncertainty before.

The same life that continues to unfold in ways I cannot always predict.

Beyond Trusting Life

The more I sat with this insight, the more it changed the question.

I thought about camping beneath the stars.

I thought about the garden.

The chickens.

The allotment.

Those summer days that seemed to flow effortlessly.

I thought about swimming, talking, laughing, eating fruit together after dinner and preparing for the first day of school.

In those moments, there was no "me" and "life."

There was simply living.

I was not watching life happen.

I was part of it.

The sense of separation had fallen away.

And perhaps that was what felt so peaceful.

Not because life had become easier.

But because I had stopped standing outside it.

An Expression of Life

The day after these reflections, the children returned to school and nursery.

The contrast was immediate.

The spaciousness of summer gave way to routines, timetables, responsibilities and practical demands.

Parts of the day felt stressful.

Old patterns of thought and old anxieties returned more easily.

At first, I was tempted to think I had somehow lost the feeling I had been describing.

Then another realisation emerged.

The feeling had changed.

But life had not gone anywhere.

The same life that was present beneath the stars was present in the school run.

The same life that moved through the trees was moving through my worries, tiredness and responsibilities.

I was not separate from life when I felt peaceful.

And I am not separate from life when I feel stressed.

A tree in a storm is no less a tree than a tree in stillness.

Perhaps we are no different.

Gradually, the question began to change.

From:

Can I trust life?

To:

Can I remember that I am part of life?

Or perhaps even:

Can I remember that I am an expression of life?

Not separate from it.

Not outside it.

Not trying to earn my place within it.

Already belonging.

Recognising Its Traces

I still cannot tell you exactly what faith is.

In truth, I am not sure I want to define it.

Some things become smaller when we turn them into explanations.

What I do know is that I am beginning to recognise its traces.

In a prayer whispered over sleeping children.

In questions that cannot be solved through calculation.

In the stars above a campsite.

In days that pass quickly because we were fully immersed in them.

In moments when the sense of separation softens and something deeper becomes visible.

Perhaps faith is not about certainty.

Perhaps it is not even about trust.

Perhaps it begins with remembering.

Remembering that we are not separate from the life we seek to understand.

Remembering that the same life moving through forests, rivers, seasons, stars and birds is moving through us too.

Remembering that we are not visitors here.

We are expressions of life itself.

And perhaps that is why faith feels less like an answer and more like a homecoming.
🌿
Dr Maliheh Taheri
M.A.L.I. Neuro-Somatic Practice