Why can't I just accept it?

I don't know why belief and faith are so hard for me. I'm not talking about a specific faith or belief. Just any faith, any belief, any anything.

I've been experiencing an extended existential crisis for about 20 months. (What a coincidence...) It's not for fun and it's not a release and it's not cathartic. It's not comforting or exciting or soothing. I just don't know if I really know anything. And while my brain can say, "Yes, I'm fully aware that there is no bottom to the well of faith, that there is nothing concrete to find" the rest of me is fully compelled to keep digging, keep looking, keep finding out more. It's much more of a compulsion than a hobby in religious history and beliefs.

It started after Eli died. I told a friend, "I don't want to be angry or sad. I've been both of those things for so long and I'm sick of it." My friend gently replied, "Don't worry, you will be." It didn't really matter how sick I was of being sad and angry. I had no idea what was coming.

Briefly, I was able to hold my faith close. I prayed. I showed up to worship. I tried to engage. And on a Sunday morning three weeks after Eli died, when everyone around me was singing about God moving mountains, I sat down. I didn't decide to sit down, my body sat down for me. My heart asked plainly, "But why didn't you move my mountain?"

That was August 2015. It's March 2017. My question remains. I thought I would be further along by now. I for sure thought I would be done treading water in an existential ocean by now. I'm not. Sometimes I wonder if I've still only just begun. I'm not in a panic over this lack of faith, though. I'm as comfortable as one can be with a bucket of doubt. I'm taking all the time I need to process, and it looks like it will be a while, still. I'm okay with it.

Except I'm so freaking frustrated. All of the exploring and listening and considering has gotten me exactly nowhere but farther down the well and I'm tired. I want to accept something, anything, so I don't have to continue all this striving.

Looking at the contributing factors to my current state I can say I got here through the combination of an extended traumatic life event and subsequent life-altering loss which my faith was not created to withstand. What I mean is the faith I learned got it wrong. My faith was great as long as I still had hope, as long as I was the one who could do the helping and fixing for others. It was meaningful. I was all in. I'm not saying I was taught wrong. I'm saying the very faith I shared with my nearest and dearest was wrong.

Look, before you get worked up, please know this is not an attack or a dis on any faith. This is my faith falling apart. Despite the terrible things done in the name of religion throughout human history, faith itself is good for humans. It is good for people to have faith, and with it a community, a sense of meaning, hope. Those are wonderful things and I want them for others and for my own family, I just can't get there myself right now.

Yesterday and everyday before that for several months, I would have told you that I don't believe in an afterlife of any kind. So yes, that means I have been of the opinion that I will never see my son again. Yes that is as shitty as it sounds, maybe more. Today I'm not so sure, though.

I've been pretty doubtful that God even exists. He's certainly not a "good, good Father" if he does. Who can know? I've been wondering if maybe God is more energy than anything.

I wish I could believe something. When Eli died and I asked to see his name in the clouds, and then most of my family saw the exact thing I had asked for (his name in the clouds ON CHRISTMAS) and all I got was a photo of it, I could only ask Why? Months later I talked to a fellow bereaved parent about it and he asked me if I would have been able to accept it if I saw it myself. I know you think the answer is Of Course, but it's not. The answer is probably not. And then this January my mom saw it again and called me, and I *happened* to be driving almost exactly parallel to her a few miles away at the exact same time and so I saw it too. You would think since this bizarre and specific thing I asked for has quite obviously happened I could accept at the very least that it is a sign of sorts. But you would again be wrong. Because all I can think is that Eli is a really short and linear name, it's not like I named the kid Mergatroid, which would be much more impressive in the clouds quite frankly.

I don't want to debate theology. I just want to be able to accept some kind of faith.

I thought I was going to hang my hat on science, but it turns out that takes too much faith, too.

German theoretical physicist, Werner Heisenberg, famously said, "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."

First of all, that is beautiful. If God is real, then God is in everything that makes our world what it is. We don't have to be afraid of learning something that will disprove God.

I guess I'm just not to the bottom of the glass, yet. Or the well of faith and belief, which has no bottom anyway.

Dr. Joanne Cacciatore founded the MISS Foundation and the Center for Loss and Trauma in the years following her daughter's death. She has published peer reviewed research around the topic of child death and bereavement. Of the bereaved authors, bloggers, foundation-starters, artists, and parents I know, I don't identify closest with Dr. Cacciatore. But she does have thoughtful and well-developed ideas that make me think.

I read her most recent article, A Subatomic Connection to Our Dead, yesterday. It's short. Go read it. I'll wait. You have know it to understand the rest of what I have to say.

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I read about the invisible connection between entangled particles last night. I already knew about fetal microchimerism cells, the cells that babies leave behind in their mothers when they are born. I know I have some of Eli's cells inside of me. Which is the most brutiful thing.

But when I read, "We are one in the same, connected subatomically, in the visible and invisible realm" my body shook. Because I knew it was true. Not only did I know it was true, science was saying it was true, and I could feel it was true.

Today I don't think it's true.

I know, it's science in the process of being peer-reviewed, which is basically the rubber stamp of factual reality.

I just want to believe it. I just want to believe that Eli and I are still connected, somehow. Somehow besides memories and stories and pictures and ideas.

I don't know why I can't accept that it's possible there is a realm of consciousness after we die (oh you know, maybe like an afterlife), or that God or Eli could be communicating with me in some fashion, or that science shows quantum entanglement is real (um, which is did).

Maybe hope is still too painful.











If anyone happened by and is going through a deconstruction of their faith, hi there. Here are some of the books, blogs, and podcasts that have helped me examine faith in a healthy way and not just throw it all away.

The Liturgists podcast- I think starting at the beginning is a good idea because in the beginning it was more straightforward and topic based and frankly a bit easier to follow. Not that I don't love it now. It has just built on itself a lot.

Science Mike (podcast, blogs, and definitely read his book, Finding God in the Waves)

Rachel Held Evans' books A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Faith Unraveled

Pretty much all the things Richard Rohr has to say, especially his guest appearances on Episode 35 of The Liturgists podcast and Episode 86 of The Robcast with Rob Bell.

Why Everything Does Not Happen For a Reason, John Pavlovitz (blog)

Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber

Any Poetry by Nayyirah Waheed

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell

The entire Harry Potter series. I was a late comer to the Wizarding World, but it's so beautiful and comforting. JK Rowling wrote it as an allegory for the forces of good and evil in the world also the Gospel, so, basically just read it and cry and feel your feelings.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller