Looking for Certainty.... is it ever to be found?

The other day I had lunch with a great friend and we had a great conversation.

He is one of the few people that I truly value his insight and his opinion of me. We have been friends for the last six years, and dear friends for the last four or five years.

Our conversation dealt mainly with me and how I have been feeling lately. He sat and listened intently as I spoke and shared my inner feelings about me and life. He would sometimes look intense about what I was saying and gently nod his head. Other times he would smile and or look surprised by what I said. Our conversation started in the car on our way to one of our favorite breakfast places that we have been sharing breakfast's at for many years. It was about a dream I had in the early evening that night. It was a gruesome dream. Anyway, he asked what I thought could have spawned the hellish dream I had just told him about.

After explaining the dream in detail, telling him where I was at in life, how I felt about where I was at in life, in general being very real and expressing raw emotions with him that I had never shared before, he looked at me with questioning eyes and a stern face and said, "You know Kevin, the one thing that drew me to you as a friend many years ago, was that as different as you and I are, we are very much the same. We are amazingly the same in many ways. As many things as you and I have talked about, there are some issues that neither one of us has really shared with each other for obvious reasons. One of those issues for example is..." as my good friend Tom continued to share with me some of the things he and I had never discussed with each other, he explained that "...because you didn't force feelings about issues, that I knew you held such strong beliefs about, in our conversations, I was drawn to be able to share more in depth with you and ultimately it is, what I think, that which has allowed us to become such good friends." He went on to say, "furthermore, and if I may (he was looking at me demonstrating that he wanted to share with me something that was on his heart and would breach the walls of one of the topics he earlier said we stayed away from)..." I said, absolutely Tom, nothing you say is going to offend me, please proceed." "Ok, I will. " he said and then paused. He was looking for the way to say what he wanted to say and at the same time let me know he was saying what he had to say with genuine feeling and he didn't want to hurt my feelings. "Go on", I said.

"Kevin when I first met you one of the things that drew me to you and allowed me to make an opinion of you, if you will, is that you are very black and white about things. You kinda had this perception of grasping things and holding onto them with a certainty about them. Now maybe it is because of your childhood..." I have shared in depth with him about my childhood and the fact that I was never certain who would be in my life. My family went through a long multi family custody battle that split my family into 4 segments. Tom continued, "... that you gravitated to things that had a 'certainty' about them. Your faith, the kind of faith you have. The certainty in which your faith sees things. I have seen you go through the struggling with this in your faith because of what your church went through (my church went through losing our pastor much in the way Haggard was defrocked, but for different reasons). I think you were already dealing with this when I first met you. You were this very black and white person that I have seen struggle with your faith and the perception of what you have believed. You were very real about it and it was obvious you struggled. And I think even now, ... I hope this isn't making you upset?" "No ,no it's not, please continue" I said. "...you struggle with the uncertainty of what you are currently going through." He lowered his voice a little and said in a more compassionate tone, "and I think that's good for you. I think that it's good to have a certain amount of uncertainty."

We sat there for a moment, both inquisitive to where the conversation was going next. All I could think about was that he was right. How do we find certainty in our life? Is it ever truly to be found? Do you think you have certainty in your life?

I used to believe in certainty and I was certain it is existed.
I feel like I just found out Santa Clause doesn't really exist.