Is Believing Seeing? Part 2

One of the best ways that I have found that works in my personal life is taking baby steps instead of giant leaps of faith..Belief expands each time that the baby step establishes a framework of trust. Here is a basic example of how this happens.

When I was very young, and before we moved to Cedar Street, we lived in a little house on what was called Hemlock Street . Hemlock no longer exists, and was part of the bulldozing when the Wallace Inn was built. Our house had a large concrete porch and steps, which by the way made for some interesting falls in the winter time. In the Spring, that same porch became a small boy's delight with a plethora pf imaginary ideas of how to play on it. One of the most fun things is that the porch became the quickest way to reach the yard, and I don't mean that we took the stairs. No, jumping off of the porch was the trick.

I did not just start jumping off on my own. Dad would stand down on the yard, and hold out his arms and tell us to jump, and he would catch us. Here is the beginning of faith.The first time was indeed frightening. Would Dad miss us, and  let us fall? Only one way to find out. Jump!And low and behold, those strong arms were there to catch us every time. A pattern of belief was born that day. If I could trust in this little exercise, surely I could trust him in bigger leaps of faith.I am going to come back to that in a minute, bu let's fast forward 50 plus years to a hospital in Idaho.

Because of the disease that I have, and because of past complications, coughing can turn into a deadly situation.
Well, when you have infections in your lungs, you have to cough the stuff up. Because I have gone in to total failure before just from coughing, I am a little shy about doing so.And yet, after the lung treatments every six hours, you are forced to cough up the plugs.Now, this is no easy task, and without getting graphic, let's just say that it takes everything out of me. Well, three weeks ago in the hospital, after I had been moved form ICU to a regular room, it was time that I started productive coughing.

OK, I was scared, to be honest. The first wheezing had started, and I knew that the first big cough was coming soon. Would the cough be successful, or would it send me into bronchial spams that can be life threatening?I tried to relax my body, and it was then , with my eyes closed, I saw like a little pool of water, and hands were reaching out, and saying, just jump, I will catch you.. My initial reaction was that these hands belonged to an angel, or perhaps Christ, I don;t know for sure, Maybe they were my Dad's hands. I took the leap, just like I did off that old porch over 50 years ago.and landed safely on the other side of the pool of water.
I did this for the rest of my hospital stay, and though some of the coughs were rough and scary, I would just picture those hands and jump. Belief was born, and became stronger each day as I practice that imagery.

Now, here is the most important thing of all. I no longer have to picture those hands when I jump, I know through established belief that they are there, and if they can catch me on little thing,s they can certainly catch me when I face much bigger pools of water to jump over.