Believe What You Want.
Believe what you want. And believe in the way that's good for you.
Faith is something personal. It shouldn't create pressure or make anyone feel wrong. It doesn't have to look the same for everyone. For me, it isn't proof that I've understood everything. It carries me precisely where I find no ready answers.
My path to faith began in the hardest times of my life. Not in a moment when everything was peaceful and safe. I was looking for something to hold on to, because so much in me had nothing left to hold on to.
I didn't suddenly stop doubting. Pain wasn't undone, and fear didn't simply disappear. But in between all of it, there were moments that I still feel today as guidance. Encounters at the right time. Paths that opened up. Strength I hadn't known was still there.
My path to faith
My faith was strengthened by miracles and by the possibility of healing. By miracles, I don't only mean something big that can't be explained. A new thought can be one, too. A person who stays. A day when the pain takes up less room. The courage, after a long time, to believe something is possible again.
By roundabout ways, this brought me back to myself. Not as a finished or healed person, but with a different view of my life. I'm grateful for the guidance, even though I only understood many of the paths in hindsight.
That's why, for me, the Bible isn't a book full of rules. It's full of hope, comfort, and wisdom. Its stories are about people with fear, guilt, doubt, and hope. People who fall, search, lose, and still aren't given up on.
I don't read in it any call to make myself small. To me, the words about love, forgiveness, and how we treat one another include self-love and mindfulness, too. After all, “Love your neighbor as yourself” doesn't mean forgetting yourself in the process.
Faith is allowed to give you something to hold on to. It's allowed to leave questions open. It's allowed to be quiet and to change. No one has to live it the way others expect.
I don't need perfect words or a role I have to fill. I can be grateful and still sad. I can hope and be afraid at the same time. I can believe and doubt. One doesn't make the other worthless.
Where I find peace
I don't find peace only in prayer or in reading. I also find it in what I've been given. In my talents. In my passion. In colors, shapes, and pictures.
When I paint. When I read. When my hands are busy and my thoughts grow quieter for a while. Then a calm arises that I can't force.
Art has helped me make visible things I had no words for for a long time. It doesn't ask for an explanation. A picture is allowed to be contradictory. It can hold pain and hope at the same time. It can be dark and still keep something bright.
I see guidance in this, too. Not as exact instructions for where my life should go, but as a reminder that something still lives in me that wants to create, to feel, and to begin again.
Emma Nord grew out of exactly this. Out of my path through hard times. Out of my belief in healing. Out of the calm I find in my art. Out of my longing for Sweden, for wide open spaces, and for a life that fits me more honestly.
I don't want to explain any faith here or convince anyone. I want to tell you about what has given me something to hold on to. About gratitude, without glossing over what was hard. About hope, without claiming that every story ends well. And about peace that doesn't mean nothing in life hurts anymore.
Believe what you want. Believe in the way that's good for you. And let your faith be a place where you become not smaller, but freer.