How I Live By Faith as Someone With Depression: It’s Not All About Religion

What is your faith? Are you even living by any?

Let’s keep this simple. Use your handy Google dictionary and take a look at the two definitions. The first describes faith as an unwavering confidence in someone or something. The second describes faith as a strong belief in God or religious doctrine based on a spiritual-knowing rather than actual proof.

As ignorant as it may sound, my brain always connected the word “faith” with religion. Did you notice that the first definition has absolutely nothing to do with religion at all? I always found a great level of interest in world religions and I still do, but I was skeptical of believing in just one. I saw too many circumstances where religious text was framed to justify a certain belief or action, which seemed to get far, far away from the intended message. I felt every single religion was absolutely worth following and they all delivered the same, necessary message of love and acceptance. I felt like I intuitively understood that using a religion to discredit others was entirely against the point.

But with this misconceived understanding of it, faith was never something I seriously considered. That is, until I found myself in an extended period of self-reflection while battling depression. I saw numerous opinion pieces explaining how it is impossible to live without faith. Some of these came from religious leaders and others did not. Once again, use your Google search bar to type ‘‘living without faith,” and you’ll easily find these pieces.

I think asking yourself this question can do so much to realign what is going on in your head. What faith am I living by? This was initially very difficult to answer. I realized the only thing I was living by, with unwavering confidence, was that I had to do something with music. And surprise, I was doing nothing to actively get myself in that direction — and I was massively depressed.

Your answer to this question does not have to be some grand proclamation of belief. Maybe your unwavering confidence without proof is the goodness in people. Maybe your unwavering confidence without proof is that everything is going to be alright no matter what is happening now. Maybe your unwavering confidence without proof is that your family will always be there no matter what you’re going through. Maybe your unwavering confidence without proof is that your little goldfish loves you! We can go on and on with this, and you can see how simple the answers can be. If your answer to this question is that you have no faith, I think you might need to try harder because you could be deceiving yourself. Do not feel bad, just keep working at it. Even if it’s just a small step in the right direction, I believe that considering your faith can work wonders for you in hard times.

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Unsplash photo via A-Xromatik