Falling Off The Cliff - Finding Faith after Hitting Rock Bottom

In 2018, I created a blog called Luna Dais. I was 19 years old at the time and had budding ideas of what life was about. I came up with the name by using the Spanish word for moon and a unique way to try and spell days. I was also trying to tie in the Sun somehow.

I remember how excited I was writing blog posts that no one would see except one or two of my internet friends at the time.

I wrote about 50 things I had learned since turning 20, finding purpose in a career, manifesting your dream life and much more.

At the time, I was reading The Untethered Soul, began doing tarot readings and took up a time-consuming hobby in Astrology. I spent thousands of dollars on different New Age courses, scoured the internet to find ways to predict my future, joined various group chats/communities of like-minded people and even tried to make a career of my spiritual practices. I had amassed over 3K followers on my astrology-centric twitter and 500 subscribers in just a month of uploading tarot readings.

But, what happens when the tools you use to find meaning in life become the very thing that pushes you off a cliff?

You see, when I first ventured into the world of the spiritual, I had ideas of making the world a better place. At least, that was the philosophy I had started with. While I wrote beautiful poetry and blog posts on finding your best life, I was beginning to lose my sanity. I struggled to stay at any job over the course of 3 years of my life, I fell deeper into a financial hole of debt and I became what many would call “delusional.”

This phenomenon is not just a spiritual thing, it's a human thing. I mean, how many pastors, teachers, politicians, parents, and children are showing one aspect of who they are to the world, but in their private life, they are something different. I don’t mean to be dark but even serial killers and rapists do the same. Clearly, they are a much different kind of human but human nonetheless.

I remember always envisioning 25 being the age I would die. I would imagine my funeral and cry, thinking about how people were grieving over me. 25, became the year that I did die, but not in the physical sense as I had imagined. I lost every notion of what being human felt like and faced the very thing I had turned to spirituality to control.

Uncertainty.

I had spent 2022 going in and out of emergency rooms, going to a specialist that my Dominican mom was referred to, a man who concocted a magical “Vitamin” drip that promised to cure my anxiety. I had daily nightmares, I saw beings that visited me in my sleep and poked and prodded me. I felt these things physically when I would wake up. I was having an out of body experience daily. Buildings looked taller than they were and the faces of my loved ones, I knew by name but felt no connection to. To be honest, I spent an entire year on the floor of my bathroom shower for 30 minutes, just letting the water run over me. I was in so much physical, emotional and mental pain I could barely comprehend what my life had become.

I am now Christian due to not just the sheer fear that I experienced during those times but that the word of God had presented itself as the only anchor I had to hold on to.

Some years later, those moments of my life feel like a passing memory, pain completely forgotten but it’s distantly in the back of my mind. I experienced my own ability to choose and yet, my inability to do so. I chose to become a Christian but it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I thought Christianity was stupid and for unintelligent people. Ironic, isn’t it?

Today, I still grapple with my existence. I don’t understand why I am here even if the bible tells me why. I don’t understand creation. I don’t understand. I don’t understand free will. I don’t understand why some people are born into evil families, some are murdered and some are raped before they are conscious enough to understand what’s happening.

I don’t understand how I have free-will but I also have a creator who weaves himself in the fabric of time and can choose to exert his will or not. I am not grappling with my faith. I don’t believe in many things but I believe in Jesus Christ and the nature of who he is. I am just trying to make sense of this life and retain my sanity in the process.

Regardless, I am the most stable I have ever been, the kindest and the most compassionate I have ever felt. I am still human with my brokenness ,but I also have a small flame alit in my heart, full of hope for the future. I love praying and how empowering it feels to believe that someone hears it and stores it in a jar in the highest of heavens. I have experienced what it's like to feel the notion of being guided by something outside of me. Yet, not in the spiritual way, where everything was a “synchronicity,” and it was always about what I wanted. I have felt invisible barriers placed around me, as if put in place to stop me from making decisions that could potentially be wrong for me (not that I would know if they were since I can’t tell the future). I have had dreams speaking to me of what could await me in the coming future.

Today, I have a job that seems perfectly tailor-made for me. My relationship with my family has improved immensely. I can’t quantifiably prove the realness of God but my life shows me that God is real. If you follow the christian faith, the way it’s supposed to be, you would grow a sense of realism when dealing with human nature, acknowledging your own depraved nature, but knowing God will continue to soften the hardness of our heart as long as we remain as malleable as clay.

I don’t go to church anymore. I don’t just listen to worship music and I don’t just watch christian-centered content. But daily, I try to read my word, I try to pray and I try to practice my faith in a practical and moderate way.

I am not sure what life has in store for me, but I can only hope that in the same way I was reconstructed when I fell off my cliff, I can only hope that any new cliffs I fall from, will bring me back better. For I know that the only certainty in this life is the uncertain.

As they say, after the rain, comes the rainbow.